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PHYSICAL MAP 
OF EUROPE 




Scale of Miles 


] Areas above 5,000 feet 

] “ “ 600 “ 

1 “ below 600 “ 

“ sea level 


M. & V. CAMB, MASS. 








































EUROPE IN THE 
MIDDLE AGES 


WARREN 


D. C. 

BOSTON 

ATLANTA 


BY 

0. AULT, M.A. (Oxon.), Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY 
IN BOSTON UNIVERSITY 






HEATH AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK CHICAGO 

SAN FRANCISCO DALLAS 

LONDON 



T)U8 

•A 87 


Copyright, 1932 
By WARREN O. AULT 

No part of the material covered by 
this copyright may be reproduced in 
any form without written permis¬ 
sion of the publisher. 

3 C 2 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


MAY -4 !93? 

©Cl A 


4 9 8 2 7 


PREFACE 


Any one who wishes to understand our own times cannot be 
indifferent to mediaeval history for there lie the foundations of 
the present. It has been well said of those who talk of the “dark 
ages” that “the darkness is on their side.” 

The author is in full sympathy with the present tendency to 
emphasize economic and social developments and the growth of 
culture. Such emphasis has resulted in the elimination from 
our textbooks of many details of wars and politics. But this 
process can be carried too far. The political outline may be¬ 
come so slight and so uncertain that all sense of progressive 
development is lost. The author hopes that in this volume the 
outline of political events is clear and sufficiently substantial. 

Since this volume was written for the undergraduate reader 
it has not been thought necessary to include an elaborate bib¬ 
liography. Lists of selected readings have been appended to 
the various chapters. Most reference libraries nowadays are 
well stocked with standard works in the field of mediaeval 
history, and the student will find a competent guide to further 
reading in his own instructor. For further assistance the student 
may turn to the general Guide to Historical Literature , edited by 
W. H. Allison and others (1931), and to the special Guide to the 
Study of Mediaeval History (revised ed., 1931) by L. J. Paetow. 

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Professor Hutton 
Webster for the use of several maps from his Early European 
History. 

W. 0. A. 

Boston University 
March, 1932 


iii 
























CONTENTS 


PAGE 

iii 


Preface ........ 

CHAPTER 

I. Introductory: The Land and the People . . 1 

II. The Greek Heritage.12 

III. The Greatness and Decline of Rome . . 22 

IV. Early History of Christianity .... 36 

V. The Germans. 49 

VI. The Invasions.59 

VII. The New German Kingdoms .... 78 

VIII. The Roman Empire in the East .... 92 

IX. The Early Christian Fathers; Monasticism; 

The Papacy.108 

X. The Rise of the Frankish State . . .123 

XI. The Century of the Great Carolingians . . 138 

XII. Decline of the Frankish Empire; New Kingdoms 160 

XIII. Enter the Northmen.170 

XIV. Mohammedanism Spreads Westward . . .179 

XV. Feudal Civilization.195 

XVI. Origin of the German Nation; Founding of the 

Medleval Empire.225 


XVII. Origin and Early Growth of the French Nation 242 
XVIII. Origin and Early Growth of the English Nation 250 

XIX. Growth of the Medleval Papacy; the Separation 


of Church and State.273 

XX. The Crusades.293 

XXI. The Revival of Trade and the Rise of Towns . 324 

XXII. The Medleval Empire’s Brilliant Failure . 353 

XXIII. The Medleval Church at its Height . . . 373 

XXIV. Mediaeval Learning; the Universities . . 403 

XXV. Medleval Literature.426 


XXVI. Medleval Art and Architecture ; the Cathedrals 445 


v 





vi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXVII. Mediaeval France: Leadership of the Monarchy 458 
XXVIII. Medleval England : Founding of the Constitution 474 

XXIX. France and England in the later Middle Ages: 

Fourteenth Century.500 

XXX. France and England in the later Middle Ages: 

Fifteenth Century.519 

XXXI. The Papacy in the later Middle Ages . . 531 

XXXII. The Decline of the German Empire and the Rise 

of the Slav States. 547 

XXXIII. Europe Faces About. 567 

XXXIV. The Renascence ..586 

Index.613 



MAPS 


Physical Map of Europe 


Frontispiece 

PAGE 

. 27 

. 84 

. 98 

. 145 
facing 184 
between 238-239 
. 257 
. 275 
. 306 


Europe in 350 a.d. 

Europe at the Death of Theodoric . 

Europe at the Death of Justinian, 565 a.d. 

The Frankish Empire in 814 a.d. . 

Expansion of Islam .... 

Europe about 1000 a.d. 

Anglo-Saxon Britain .... 

Norman Possessions in Italy and Sicily 
Crusaders’ States in Syria . 

Mediterranean Lands after the Fourth Crusade 

between 314-315 

Commercial Towns and Trade Routes . . 328 and 329 

France Under Philip Augustus, 1180-1223 .... 463 

Dominions of Henry II.481 

France during the Hundred Years’ War .... 507 
Germany and Italy in the Fourteenth Century facing 546 
Eastern Europe in the Fourteenth Century . . . 563 

Unification of Spain.572 

Empire of the Ottoman Turks at the Fall of Constan¬ 
tinople, 1453 a.d.579 

Italy in the Fifteenth Century.609 


vii 





EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


CHAPTER ONE 

INTRODUCTORY: THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 

Why Study History? 

History is the record of human experience. It is concerned 
with the whole of the past of mankind. It is “all we know about 
everything man has ever done, or thought, or felt.” This past 
of mankind has become a social heritage which each generation 
receives, transforms, extends, and hands on to the next. 

From the study of history we gain social experience. Gre¬ 
gariousness or the social instinct is fundamental in human 
nature. Men live and have always lived as members of groups, 
not in isolation. It is important that each of us be trained for 
normal and helpful life in such social groups as the family, the 
community, the nation, and the family of nations, which is 
humanity. To this end social experience in each group is 
essential. Such experience is best gained, of course, in actual 
life. But in preparation for actual life in the various social 
groups the individual will do well to relive the life story of each 
group from its primitive beginnings to the present day. This is 
the study of history. 

Another reason for studying history is that it helps to make 
the world intelligible. None of the institutions which make up 
our present world can be understood merely as something which 
is; it is always in process of becoming something else. A study 
of the history of an institution is, then, only the study of the in¬ 
stitution itself. To look at an institution in the present is to 
see only a plane surface in two dimensions. History is the third 
dimension. Through it we enter an institution’s structure, wan¬ 
der through its rooms and discover their uses. “To really un- 

1 


2 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


derstand anything we must know the life that it has lived.” 

Again, through the study of history we may hope for progress. 
To live only in the present is to be the prisoner of the present. 
“To study history is to escape out of prison because it compels 
us to compare the ways of our own age with other ways,” says 
Professor Gilbert Murray. He continues, “There has been 
hardly any great forward movement of humanity which did not 
draw its inspiration from the knowledge, or the idealization, 
of the past.” It is essential, therefore, not only that each suc¬ 
cessive generation should study history, but that each genera¬ 
tion should write its own textbooks. Passing in review the whole 
record of civilization, its social heritage, humanity should hold 
fast what is good. It was in this spirit that Ramsay MacDonald 
addressed the League of Nations Assembly. “What we have to 
do is to hold out our one hand to the past, and to hold out the 
other hand to the future, and to move steadily on, taking the 
past with us, and embracing the prospects, hopes and comforts 
which the future gives.” 

Why Study European History? 

It is obvious that certain portions of the record of human ex¬ 
perience, certain fields of history, are more immediately useful 
to us than are others. There are in the world to-day four great 
civilizations, the Chinese, the Hindu, the Greek-Oriental, and 
the Western. Our civilization, of course, is the Western, or 
European. Practically all the peoples who have counted for 
much in American history have been of European origin. Every 
square mile of territory now in our possession has come to us 
through seven different states, all European. We speak a Euro¬ 
pean language. When we learn another language it is usually a 
European language. We wear European clothes. Our political 
institutions, our law, nearly all our churches, our art, are Euro¬ 
pean in origin. Our very history had its beginnings as an aspect 
of European history. The discovery, exploration, and settle¬ 
ment of America were the results of European movements, and 
sprang from the economic needs, the religious disturbances, and 
the adventuresome spirit of Europe. And since its beginnings 
our history has been greatly influenced by, has continued 


THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 


3 


to be an integral part of, the general history of western civ¬ 
ilization. 

Even if we were not Europeans, if we were Chinese or Japa¬ 
nese, the study of European history would be of vital impor¬ 
tance for us. The world is coming to be European. It was 
Europeanized in several essential aspects in the nineteenth 
century, and the process is still going on. This spread of Euro¬ 
pean culture has come with the spread of the economic interests 
of the western nations (including our own) throughout the 
world. This is not to say that religious and humanitarian mo¬ 
tives have not played a part. In studying European history, 
then, we are led into the study of world history. 

The Physical Geography of Europe 

If history is the record of man’s experience, it is also the rec¬ 
ord of his experience in a particular environment. The earth on 
which man lives is immensely old. The estimates of geologists 
vary from five hundred million years to one billion five hun¬ 
dred million years, and the more recent estimates tend to be the 
longer. Four great geologic eras have been distinguished. They 
are the Archean, the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, and the Cenozoic. 
We might compare these four eras in the history of the earth 
with the four ages in the history of man, namely, the prehistoric, 
the ancient, the mediaeval, and the modern. The Archean era 
lasted as long, perhaps, as the three remaining eras all together. 
In this first era of the earth’s history molten rock was still 
reaching its surface in a flood. The very oldest of the sedimen¬ 
tary rock was laid down as weathering began its unending 
process. None of the continents had received their present 
outlines, however. Life appeared but it developed only the 
simplest forms, as the few fossils of this era reveal. The Paleo¬ 
zoic era, or the period of ancient life, covered perhaps one- 
third of the life of the earth. Most of North America appeared 
above the sea at this time, it is thought. The first mountain 
ranges of central Europe and Asia appeared. The worn stumps 
of these ancient ranges may still be seen in Ireland, Wales, 
France, and central Germany. Thence these ranges continued 
across central Asia to the Pacific, and to the southeast through 


4 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


India to Australia, at that time connected with India. The 
fossils of this age are abundant, but the animal life was as yet 
of the water. In the swamp-lands grew the fern-like trees 
which were to become our coal. 

The Mesozoic era represents about one-tenth of the whole 
age of the earth. It is the age of reptiles, gigantic dinosaurs, 
both on land and in the sea. Southern Europe and northern 
Africa were under water. A wide-stretching sea, the shrunken 
remnant of which is the Mediterranean, covered the southern 
half of England, the whole of France, Italy, and southeastern 
Europe, and, reaching northward through Siberia, joined the 
Arctic Ocean. On the southeast this great sea extended to the 
Indian Ocean. In the western hemisphere the Mesozoic era was 
one of mountain making, the great backbone of the two Ameri¬ 
can continents, from Alaska to Cape Horn, being thrust aloft. 
The Cenozoic or “modern” era extends to our own time and 
began about two or three million years ago. About the middle 
of the period came the last great upward thrust in Europe and 
Asia, which continents gradually took their present form. The 
Mediterranean shrank to its present size. The great highland 
axis or backbone of Europe and Asia appeared, stretching from 
Spain to China. Its highest points are the peaks of the Alps 
and the Himalayas, the youngest and the loftiest mountains 
in the world. 

The continent of Europe in its present shape is like a tri¬ 
angle, with the Iberian peninsula as its apex and the base rest¬ 
ing on Asia. The axis, extending from apex to base, is consider¬ 
ably south of the center. It is an irregular mountain range and 
includes the Pyrenees, Cevennes, Jura, and Vosges, the whole 
Alpine chain, only two-fifths of which is in Switzerland, and the 
Carpathians and Balkans. This dividing ridge is then submerged 
in the Black and Caspian seas (left over from the ancient Medi¬ 
terranean Ocean), whose northern parts are much shallower 
than their southern. Thus Europe is divided, by this long moun¬ 
tain axis, into two unequal parts. The northern and much larger 
part is a great lowland plain, the most important single geo¬ 
graphical influence in Europe. It is gently sloping to the north¬ 
west and north, and the slope is continued under the English 


THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 


5 


Channel and the North, Baltic, and White seas, which are all 
very shallow and really represent encroachments of the sea upon 
the lowlands. The long fight of the Netherlanders against fur¬ 
ther encroachment is one of the epics of European history. 
Farther west and north the land rises again in the mountains 
of Wales, Scotland, and Scandinavia. This great lowland plain 
is drained by numerous large rivers, the Loire, Seine, Rhine, 
Oder, Vistula, and others. There is nowhere any good natural 
boundary. It is possible to travel by rail to-day from the south¬ 
west of France through Paris and Berlin to the extreme north¬ 
east of European Russia without having passed through a single 
tunnel or once having been more than six hundred feet above 
sea level. All political boundaries in this great plain have, 
hitherto, been made and maintained by force, as is illustrated 
by most European wars, including the last once. The low plain 
and the shallow sea are extremely favorable to life. The oldest 
forms of life were probably of marine origin at depths of less 
than six hundred feet. The greatest development of land fauna 
has been at heights of less than six hundred feet. It is interesting 
to note that three-quarters of Europe falls within these limits. 

South of Europe’s highland axis the descent is short and ab¬ 
rupt and continues under the water. The Mediterranean Sea 
and the southern parts of the Black and Caspian seas are more 
than 6000 feet deep over large areas. In contrast with the great 
lowland plain of the north, the south presents little more than 
the three peninsulas of Spain, Italy, and the Balkans, all fairly 
mountainous. There are a few important rivers, the Ebro, 
Rhone, Po, and Danube, the latter the longest in Europe. The 
other rivers here are short and unimportant. 

On the whole Europe has a large number of important rivers 
and their significance should not be missed. Rivers are high¬ 
ways of communication, and were so especially in a time when 
the land was covered with dense forests and in an age that 
knew not of railways. River valleys make possible the move¬ 
ment of peoples. Hun, Avar, Slav, and Magyar followed the 
Danube westward. The Franks, the Bavarians, the crusaders, 
and the Hapsburgs followed it eastward. Three political capi¬ 
tals and scores of sanctuaries dotted its banks. The Rhine 


6 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


valley was the funnel through which Celt and Teuton poured 
to the west. A project recently begun will unite the Rhine with 
the Danube by a canal, enabling seagoing ships to travel by in¬ 
land water the 2000 miles from the North Sea to the Black Sea. 
The Rhone valley shaped Burgundy; the Ebro river gave its 
name to the Iberian peninsula. On the other hand, rivers are 
not good boundaries. The Romans made the Rhine their fron¬ 
tier, Charlemagne placed his capital on its banks, and the 
French have sought to imitate the Romans, but they have all 
labored in vain. 

Mountain ranges, on the other hand, are barriers to com¬ 
munication and promote localism and provincialism. “Balkan” 
is a Turkish word meaning “mountain”, and the group of small 
and contending states in that peninsula is a not unnatural re¬ 
sult of the physical background. In less degree the mountains 
of Italy and of Spain, of France and of Germany, and even of 
Wales and of Scotland, have fostered sectionalism in those 
countries and delayed national union. 

It remains to note Europe’s relation to the rest of the world. 
To the north she is hemmed in by Arctic sea and ice. To the 
west the stormy Atlantic remained a barrier until recent centu¬ 
ries. To the south the Sahara is the true boundary of European 
culture, if not of Europe. The narrow tideless Mediterranean 
is a highway over which Europe’s culture has flowed to north¬ 
ern Africa and, occasionally, as Saracen civilization attests, 
Africa’s culture has crossed to Europe. Of all Europe’s barriers, 
the Sahara has been the slowest to yield to man’s attack. 

As seen from Asia, Europe is but the peninsular end of the 
single great continent of Eurasia. The dividing line between 
Asia and her daughter continent is a very real one, however, 
and hard to cross. Mountain and forest stretch along most of 
its length. The Caspian Sea interposes its barrier of seven 
hundred miles at the south. But between the Ural mountains 
and the Caspian Sea is a gap of unforested lowland, once the 
smooth floor of an inland sea. The drought of s um mer and the 
cold north winds of winter have combined to keep this gap open. 
Through it have come hordes of wild and warlike men from “the 
dead heart of Asia” — Hun and Magyar, Finn and Turk. Their 


THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 


7 


impact upon the peoples of Europe is a most important factor 
in Europe’s history. 

Early Man in Europe 

There are evidences of man’s life in Europe as early as any¬ 
where in the world. Traces of early man are so abundant and 
archaeologists have made them so familiar that it is no longer 
possible to retain the old division of historic and prehistoric 
in man’s life on the earth. The invention of writing some three 
or four thousand years before Christ made it much easier for 
us to find out through written records what men did and what 
men thought about, but the study of the weapons and other 
implements and utensils of man thousands of years before the 
invention of writing tells us much of what men did and some¬ 
thing, at least, of what they thought. It is better to divide 
man’s history into a “literary” period, some five or six thou¬ 
sand years long now, and a “ pre-literary ” period, the evidences 
of which stretch back at least one hundred thousand years. 

During the long pre-literary period man’s weapons and im¬ 
plements were chiefly of stone. Through some ninety thousand 
years his implements were shapen but crudely. This was the 
Old Stone (palaeolithic) Age. Throughout this long period 
men “took the world as they found it, and made little attempt 
to alter it.” The animals they slaughtered and the fruits they 
gathered were wild. Their homes were caves found ready for 
use. Then came a period marked by a very different attitude of 
mind. Man began to try to improve his environment. He be¬ 
gan by shaping his implements, still of stone, much more ex¬ 
pertly. This was the New Stone (neolithic) Age. Axes, drills, 
chisels, and saws were skillfully shaped and highly polished 
with the highest art ever reached by man in stone. These 
greatly improved utensils became the basis for what is perhaps 
the first real civilization developed by man. Evidences of this 
civilization of the New Stone Age are to be found in nearly all 
parts of Europe, in the stone circles like Stonehenge, in the 
stumps of piles driven by lake dwellers in Switzerland and else¬ 
where, and in the windrows of bones and skulls, such as those 
along the coasts of Denmark. 




8 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


The Races of Europe 

Men have long been accustomed to distinguish certain races 
or, as we commonly say, breeds of cattle, sheep, or dogs by the 
observation of certain physical characteristics. Scientists now 
classify men in the same way; and if a certain race so distin¬ 
guished seems also to display mental and moral traits of a given 
sort, these are attributed to long continued life in a certain en¬ 
vironment rather than to any quality innate in the race itself. 
There seems to be little support for the belief that any one race 
has a “mystical” superiority over other races. 

The physical characteristics defining the human races are, 
first, stature, which includes height, breadth, and bodily propor¬ 
tions. Secondly, pigmentation, which includes the color of the 
hair and eyes and the type of complexion. This is so noticeable 
a characteristic that an early classification of man was based 
upon pigmentation alone, and we still speak of the white race, 
the yellow race, and the black race. Lastly, shape of the head, 
which is especially useful in relating living men with dead ones. 
Indeed, this is the most enduring of all characteristics, being 
least affected by a change of environment. Stature, on the 
other hand, is very susceptible to such a change. 

Applying these tests, the peoples of Europe fall into three 
groups. First, the Nordics, found especially in Scandinavia and 
along the shores of the Baltic Sea. This is one of the tallest 
races in the world and one of the most muscular, with large 
bones. Their skin is the whitest of all human beings; their 
hair is fair, and the eyes are gray. Their skulls are massive 
and broad, their jaws and teeth well developed. Moral charac¬ 
teristics, derived from the physical, are sturdiness of disposition, 
a resolution “never, never to be slaves”, great physical cour¬ 
age, and, in youth, a certain headlong impulsiveness. A second 
type, called Alpine, is found in the highlands of central Europe 
from central France to the Balkans. Such folk are of medium 
stature and stocky build, with short necks and a tendency to 
corpulency. Their heads are very short and broad and the 
back of the head is quite flat. They are dark-skinned, and have 
brown eyes and dark or brown hair which is straight and coarse. 


THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 


9 


Mediterranean is the name given to a third type which is 
found in northern Africa, Syria, the islands of the iEgean, Italy, 
Sicily, southern France, and Spain; in short, in the whole Medi¬ 
terranean basin. People of this type are short, slender, and 
graceful, with small bones and a general lack of robustness. 
Their skin is dark, and they have dark eyes and dark, often 
black, hair which may be fine and wavy. Their heads are long 
and narrow. They are unusually good looking, though the 
northern peoples may consider them effeminate and lacking 
in physical courage. 

Now it is a rather remarkable fact that all these types of 
“white” peoples have been present in western Europe from the 
remotest times of which we have records. In the caves of south¬ 
ern France have been found the remains of men of the Old Stone 
Age, all of whose physical characteristics can be matched among 
living races of the present day. Indeed, the features of these so- 
called Aurignac men are to be found as those of the predominant 
element of the population of certain parts of Ireland, Wales, 
France, Spain, and even of northern Africa at the present time. 
We may guess, and it is no more than a guess, that these earli¬ 
est Europeans sifted westward into Europe from some region in 
Asia. Wave after wave of migration rolled slowly westward. 
Europe’s present population, therefore, is highly composite, and 
though we may distinguish in a group of Europeans sufficiently 
large certain racial characteristics, it is not easy now to find an 
individual man or woman of purely Alpine or Nordic or Medi¬ 
terranean features. 

In eastern Europe we find to-day other breeds of men who 
seem to have come in from the southeast and northeast of Asia 
in more recent times. They are principally of the Mongoloid 
type. This type is found to-day in the extreme northeast of 
Russia and also in small “islands” throughout Russia, especially 
along the upper Volga, and in Esthonia, Finland, and Lapland. 
The Mongoloids have black hair, swarthy complexions, round 
beardless faces, high cheek bones, broad short heads, and “ squint’ ’ 
eyes. They are probably related to the Mongols of central Asia 
and may have been early wanderers from the Mongol home 
before that race had become so highly specialized as it is now. 


10 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Race and Nationality 

As a clue to the trend of European history the study of 
racial types has only a limited value. In no modern state of 
Europe is there an unmixed race, as we have seen. A far more 
fruitful field of inquiry is that of cultural groups. These are 
the fruit of the long continued life of a people together, usually 
in the same homeland. Another term for a cultural group is 
“ nation”. The nation is a highly complex entity, an entity un¬ 
known, moreover, to the ancient world and to the greater part 
of the middle ages, but of surpassing interest and importance 
to the present world. To trace the development of the nation 
and to determine the factors of which it is composed is one of 
the major tasks of the student of European history. Nation¬ 
ality has practically nothing to do with race. A Nordic may be 
a German, Russian, Frenchman, Italian, Englishman, or Irish¬ 
man, with equal ease. Nationality has more to do with language, 
since a common language facilitates the common possession by 
a group of the ideas, traditions, and literature which enter into 
its culture. But a cultural group may change its language, es¬ 
pecially if it employs the instrument of a compulsory school 
system; or it may get along with several languages as the Swiss 
and the Belgians do; or people who speak the same language 
may split into two separate cultural groups, like the American 
colonists and the English. Long continued possession of the 
same homeland is an important, almost an essential, condition 
of nationality. But the heart of the whole matter seems to be 
sentiment—“to have done great things together in the past, 
and to wish to do great things together in the future.” 

As already noted, cultural or national groups do not always 
coincide with language groups, though there is a general con¬ 
formity. There is, of course, no relation at all between the lan¬ 
guage classification and the racial classification. All of the 
languages of modern Europe, with a very few exceptions, be¬ 
long to the same language family, the Aryan or Indo-European. 
This family is so named because of its relationship to the ancient 
language of India and Persia. And not only the modern lan¬ 
guages but Greek and Latin are also members of this family. 


THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 


11 


The non-Aryan languages of Europe include those of the Turks 
and Magyars, who came to Europe from Asia after the Aryan 
dominance had been established, and those of the Basques 
and the Finns, who may have preceded the coming of the 
Aryans and may be the sole survivors. The tendency in the 
middle ages and a tendency which yet continues is for lan¬ 
guages to decrease steadily in number as localism gives way to 
nationalism. 


CHAPTER TWO 


THE GREEK HERITAGE 

European civilization began in the iEgean world. The student 
who consults his map will quickly see that the iEgean Sea is 
really a lake, being almost completely enclosed by land. On 
the west and north is the mainland of Europe, the Greek penin¬ 
sula; on the east is Asia Minor; on the south, stretching from 
west to east nearly the whole distance from the mainland of 
Europe to the mainland of Asia, is the island of Crete. This 
“lake” of the iEgean, moreover, is thickly sprinkled with 
hundreds of islands; the surrounding coast line, European and 
Asiatic, is deeply indented; there are many small peninsulas, 
really islands. Thus the whole region abounds in small bits of 
land. Then, too, these patches of land are very fertile. Barley 
and wheat, the olive and the vine, flourish in the mild rainy 
winter and the warm dry summer. It is an area physically 
suited to the early development of a civilization. 

Further, the iEgean world is that part of Europe which was 
in closest contact with those regions of southwestern Asia and 
northeastern Africa where civilization in our western world 
first began. Egypt, Babylonia, Phoenicia, Palestine, and Persia 
were richly stored with the cultural achievements of many 
centuries when civilization in the iEgean was in its beginnings. 
These achievements were freely appropriated by the iEgean 
world and so passed into the stream of western civilization. 

Early Civilization of the IEgean 

iEgean civilization first developed in some of the islands, 
especially in Crete. It began about 3000 b.c. and during the 
next fifteen centuries reached a high point of development. 
The iEgeans were of the same dark, slight, Mediterranean type 
of man as the Egyptians, though the two peoples are readily 
distinguishable from each other in physical appearance. Their 

12 


THE GREEK HERITAGE 


13 


borrowings from Egypt, with which the iEgeans were in con¬ 
tinuous contact, were numerous and included the potter’s 
wheel and certain letters of their alphabet. Their borrowings 
from Babylonia were less extensive but included writing ma¬ 
terials and the art of seal-cutting. But the iEgeans were not 
borrowers only. They developed in their favored isles an in¬ 
digenous culture “no whit inferior to the contemporary cultures 
of Asia and Egypt.” By 2000 b.c. they had a phonetic art of 
writing, using the clay tablet. In the “Great Age” of Cretan 
culture, 1650-1500 b.c., the Minoan pottery was the finest 
known and was exported to Egypt. To the same age belongs the 
great palace of the Cretan kings at Cnossus, a palace arranged 
in the Egyptian manner but without fortifications. From Crete 
.ZEgean culture spread to the European mainland and flourished 
in such centers as Tiryns and Mycenae in the Peloponnesus. 
Troy, on the northwestern coast of Asia Minor, though of in¬ 
dependent origin seems to have been drawn into the ^Egean 
“empire.” Of the political history of this empire almost nothing 
is known. Scholars have not yet succeeded in reading the Cretan 
language. About 1400 b.c., however, political disaster of some 
sort overwhelmed the Cretans, probably an invasion of bar¬ 
barians from the north. 

This fleeting glimpse of Cretan culture will serve to place the 
more brilliant civilization of the Greeks in a truer perspective. 
The swift rise of Greek culture will seem less of a miracle when 
we recall that it grew up out of a civilized past twenty-five 
centuries long. The Athens of Pericles did not suddenly spring to 
life full grown. 


The Greeks 

The three hundred years from the seventh to the fourth 
century b.c. saw in Greece one of the greatest developments of 
civilization in the history of the world. The Greek people are 
a fusion of Indo-European invaders from the north with the 
iEgean natives whose civilization the northerners appropriated. 
The area of the Greek mainland in Europe is about 45,000 
square miles. The land is very mountainous, and mountains 
and sea combine to divide the land into innumerable small 


14 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


districts—little valleys, short and narrow stretches of coast, 
and tiny peninsulas. Inevitably there developed a multitude 
of small states and a great diversity of dialects, religions, and 
cultures. A cluster of villages would unite around a common 
stronghold, such as the Acropolis at Athens, to form a city-state, 
the political unit of Greek life. The earliest city-states were 
agricultural. The farmers grew wheat, barley, grapes, and 
olives, on which they chiefly lived. Even later, in the “Great 
Age” of Greece, ownership of some land, however small a par¬ 
cel, was almost essential to the possession of the full rights of 
citizenship. It is evident that we shall go very far astray if we 
think of the Greek city-states in terms of a modern industrial 
city. A few thousand or even a few hundred citizens sufficed 
for an early Greek “polis”. Yet in these little communities 
there developed an intensity of cultural and political life un¬ 
paralleled before or since. 

An early development of immense consequence for the Hel¬ 
lenic race was the sowing of these city-states broadcast by 
colonization. Over-population with consequent land-hunger 
furnished the driving force, in the main. The little pockets of 
productive land soon filled up. The sea, with clear visibility 
and prevailing winds, was a standing invitation to venture forth. 
Colonization became a fine art with an established technique. 
The mother-city would furnish its little band of venturesome 
citizens with a charter, a leader, and a flame from her sacred 
fire. Faring forth over the water the colonists would found a 
daughter-city, carefully retaining everything essentially Greek in 
their way of fife in the new land. The newly founded city thus 
became an independent center of Hellenic civilization. One 
Greek city founded more than forty daughter-cities that we 
know of, and the total number may have been much greater. 
The islands of the JEgean, the coast of Asia Minor, the entire 
Black Sea basin, the Nile delta, the coast of northern Africa, 
southern Italy and Sicily, and the Mediterranean coasts of 
France and Spain were thus colonized. Westward the course 
of Hellenic civilization took its way. The region of southern 
Italy and Sicily, so similar to Greece itself in climate and vege¬ 
tation, became a western Hellas. 


THE GREEK HERITAGE 


15 


The Hellenic contribution to western civilization, “the richest 
contribution made by any people in the course of history”, was 
chiefly intellectual and artistic. Yet it would seem that a great 
military victory, the repulse of Persia, a victory due to the 
superiority of the Greeks in solid fighting qualities, was what 
made possible the full development of Greek culture. In the 
first quarter of the fifth century b.c. the vast Persian empire, 
having reduced the Greek cities of Asia Minor to submission, 
sought to extend its dominion to the isles of Greece and the 
European mainland. To survive this threatened inundation 
and then to sweep it back called forth through more than two 
decades heroism, audacity, and statesmanship of a supreme 
quality. There resulted a superb self-confidence, not a little of 
which is reflected in Greek literature, in Greek art, and in 
Greek speculation about nature and human nature. The Great 
Age of Greece, then, follows upon the repulse of Persia about 
480 b.c., and lasts to the rise of Macedonia about 340 b.c.; 
that is, about a century and a half. 

Greek Philosophy 

It is said that idle curiosity, the impulse to “wonder why ”, is 
the basis of all creative thought. Certainly the Greeks had 
this impulse more than any other people before or since. Philos¬ 
ophy is defined by Emerson as “the account which the human 
mind gives to itself of the constitution of the world”. The first 
great speculative philosopher of Greece was Thales of Miletus 
(sixth century b.c.). He had so made himself the master of 
the learning of Egypt and Chaldea as to be able to foretell the 
solar eclipse of 585 b.c. He went on to wonder how the ma¬ 
terial universe had come into being and of what it was made, 
and he concluded that the primordial substance was water. 
Thales was followed by other speculative philosophers and scien¬ 
tists who wondered about the material universe and who tried 
to figure it all out. Incidentally they made a considerable ad¬ 
vance in mathematics. Fifth century Greeks tired of specula¬ 
tion about the universe and turned to man and to problems of 
man’s thought and knowledge. “Man is the measure of all 
things,” they felt. The material world has a real existence 


16 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


chiefly as an element in man’s consciousness. But in a Greek 
city-state man needed training for his duties of citizenship, 
physical and mental training, so these fifth century philoso¬ 
phers, the Sophists, became teachers, accepting fees. They 
became adept at argumentation, some not scorning to “make 
the worse appear the better reason.” Then came Socrates 
(470-399 b.c.) to expose the shallowness of the latter-day 
Sophists. His great emphasis was in the moral realm. He sought 
to define and to establish moral standards. Socrates felt that if 
men only knew what was right they would do it. The nobility 
of his life and the calm and steadfast heroism of his death have 
made Socrates a figure of inspiration across the centuries; his 
importance as a philosopher can be measured from the fact 
that six different schools of philosophy, founded by his dis¬ 
ciples, emphasized various aspects of his teaching. 

Plato (425-347 b.c.) was the most famous disciple of Soc¬ 
rates. His chief teaching, perhaps, was the doctrine that ideas 
are the only realities. Ideas become embodied in men and though 
men die their ideas live by becoming embodied in other men. 
Plato expressed his teachings in a prose style almost poetic 
in its beauty. Cicero calls him a “god among philosophers.” 
Aristotle (d. 322 b.c.) was, in turn, the pupil of Plato, differing 
from his master, however, in many important ways. Aristotle 
was a scientist. He was the inventor of the scientific method. 
He mapped out the various sciences and made important con¬ 
tributions to several of them. He wrote in a dry matter-of-fact, 
i. e., “scientific”, way. To the science of politics he made “the 
profoundest contribution made by any ancient writer”. His 
manual on the science of logic was used by European students 
for two thousand years. The Greek contribution to philosophy 
was thus immense. One may say of Greek philosophy what 
Emerson warmly says of Plato alone—out of it “come all things 
that are still written and debated among men of thought.” 

Greek Literature 

In literature the Greeks are well-nigh as famous as in philos¬ 
ophy. Their language was a great asset to them in this realm, 
beautifully flexible, capable of expressing the most delicate 


THE GREEK HERITAGE 


17 


shades of meaning, “as perfect an instrument as it is possible 
for human speech to be.” The masterpieces of Greek litera¬ 
ture were chiefly in the field of the drama and, more particu¬ 
larly, they were the work of three great tragedians, iEschylus, 
Sophocles, and Euripides. iEschylus, earliest of the three, is 
also the most archaic in style and deals more exclusively with 
heroic themes, depicting his characters as sublimely struggling 
with their inevitably tragic fate. Sophocles shows the greatest 
artistic skill in the unfolding of his plots. Of his characters 
Sophocles said, “I draw men as they ought to be.” Euripides, 
the latest of the three, is the realist, depicting men as they are. 
Highly as we value the works of these three tragedians, our 
estimate is based upon but a fragment of their total output. 
iEschylus wrote ninety plays; but seven survive. We have seven, 
also, of Sophocles, and eighteen of Euripides. 

In the field of the writing of history the Greek contribution 
is more fundamental still. In Herodotus, “the father of his¬ 
tory”, we have history as literature, for Herodotus was a su¬ 
preme artist as a story teller. He recounted for his own genera¬ 
tion the heroic story of the Persian Wars. He is “popular” in 
the best sense. His work, incidentally, is the first extended ex¬ 
ample of Greek prose. In Thucydides we have the founder of 
the scientific school of historical investigation and writing. He 
is critical of his sources and insists upon first-hand evidence. 
He wrote of his own times—the story of the wars between 
Athens and Sparta. 


Greek Art 

On Greek art a volume might easily be written; indeed, 
many volumes have been written. Most of the art itself has 
perished; we may know simply its fame; and we can discern 
the profound influence it has exercised upon the art of succeed¬ 
ing centuries. Greek painting has vanished completely. We 
may form some conception of its beauty from the vase paint¬ 
ing of the fifth century b.c., the work of artists not deemed 
the equal, by any means, of Apelles and Protagenes, the most 
famous of Grecian painters. Of Greek sculpture from the best 
period only two or three originals survive, if we except the 


18 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


fragments from the Parthenon. We are therefore dependent 
for our appreciation of this greatest of the Greek arts upon 
later copies of the famous masterpieces. Yet these copies are 
rated to-day as the finest sculpture in the world. Greek archi¬ 
tecture’s principal achievement was the temple. The Parthe¬ 
non of Athens has been called the most beautiful building in the 
world. Enough of the Parthenon still remains to give the ob¬ 
server an adequate idea of its quality. Its beauty seems to derive 
chiefly from its exquisitely just proportions, such as the ratio 
of the height of a column to its diameter, and the depth of the 
shadow cast by the Huttings of the columns. This structure, 
in the Doric style, stood substantially complete in 438 b.c., 
having been nine years in the building. Its architect was Ictinus, 
and Pheidias designed the sculptures. These show the Greek 
artist as the complete master of every phase of his art. 

The Political Failure of Greece 

The deathless triumphs of the Greeks in art and in the realm 
of the intellect far outweigh their record of continous failure 
politically. Welded together for a brief period by the pressure 
and heat of Persian attack, the highly individual and jealous 
city-states quickly fell apart again. During the century and 
a half of their greatest cultural triumphs the Greeks indulged 
in the bitter partisanship of political strife, between city and 
city and between faction and faction within the several cities. 
In nearly all her battles, says Plutarch, Greece fought “against 
and to subdue herself; . . . she was brought to ruin and 
desolation almost wholly by the guilt and ambition of her great 
men”. The art of political compromise and cooperation was 
one art not practiced among the Greeks. The little world of 
warring city-states, with their brilliant culture and no little 
wealth, was a standing invitation to conquest to the barbarian 
world that surrounded it. And conquest came, as so often 
in the ancient world, from the north. 

Conquests of Alexander 

The Macedonians were probably akin to the peoples who 
had come down into the Greek peninsula from the north and 


THE GREEK HERITAGE 


19 


from whose fusion with the native iEgean stock the Greeks were 
descended. The Macedonians, while still without any real 
civilization of their own, had developed to the point where 
they were ready to assimilate many of the elements of the 
brilliant civilization to the south of them. In particular, they 
had learned the Greek art of war from Thebes, which had re¬ 
cently developed a new “formation” which, astonishingly 
enough, had beaten Sparta. Macedon was a nation-state under 
a strong ruler and leader, and in the hands of King Philip II, 
and his son Alexander, the Greek art of war not only completely 
subdued the Greeks but also made the conquest of the world. 
Greek political independence ended with Philip’s victory at 
Chseronea, in 338 b.c. Two years later King Philip was stabbed 
in a palace intrigue, but his vast plans of conquest were taken 
in hand by Alexander. With an army of about 45,000 men, 
Macedonians and Greeks, Alexander completely conquered the 
Persian empire, which stretched from Egypt to India. Persia, 
which earlier had threatened to snuff out European civiliza¬ 
tion and orientalize the HEgean world, had now been ruined 
by the Europe she had failed to conquer. 

It seems clear that Alexander was thinking not so much of 
destroying the Persian empire as of founding an empire of 
his own. Throughout the vast region he traversed he planted 
towns, mostly named after himself, with garrisons of Mace¬ 
donian soldiers and colonies of Greek artisans and traders. 
This policy was continued for many years by Alexander’s 
successors. So many Greeks left their native cities to settle 
abroad that Greece was depopulated in a measure and grass 
grew in the streets of Greek cities. The effect of this vast dis¬ 
persion of Greeks was of momentous consequence to the world. 
It meant the spread of Greek civilization throughout the eastern 
world and even westward to Rome. The Greek language became 
a universal tongue. The sacred books of the Hebrews were 
translated into Greek for the greater convenience of the widely 
dispersed Jews. Egyptian peasants conducted their litigation 
in Greek. Alexandria, in Egypt, became the center of Greek 
literature and linguistics. In the West the educated Roman 
found it essential to know Greek. 


20 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Hellenistic Civilization 

This spread of the Greek language and of Greek civilization 
in the eastern Mediterranean gave to that vast region a com¬ 
mon character for the three centuries that lie between the death 
of Alexander (323 b.c.) and the final conquest of the eastern 
Mediterranean by Rome (30 b.c.). Historians have called 
this period the Hellenistic Age because, though Greek, it was 
less Greek than the Hellenic Age which preceded it. But we 
must not think of the civilization of the Hellenistic Age as a 
mere spreading-out-thin of Hellenic culture. It was much more 
than that. It was creative. In scientific research the Hellen¬ 
istic Age surpassed all previous civilizations. Archimedes of 
Syracuse (d. 212 b.c.) was the greatest mathematician yet seen; 
Aristarchus of Samos (d. 230 b.c.) and Hipparchus (d. 140 b.c.) 
were the greatest of ancient astronomers. They taught the 
heliocentric theory of the solar system, that is, that the Earth 
and the other planets revolve around the Sun. 

The sculpture of this Age, though deemed inferior to that of 
the Great Age of Greece, is none the less of great merit, as the 
fame of the Laocoon group and of the Winged Victory of Samo- 
thrace testifies. The artistic output, moreover, seems to have 
been enormous. Athens remained the center of philosophy, 
but the literary center of the Hellenistic Age was not in Greece 
at all but at Alexandria, in the Nile delta. Here, under the 
intelligent leadership of the Ptolemy kings of Egypt, successors 
of Alexander in this part of his empire, was accumulated the 
greatest library the world had yet seen, including some half¬ 
million manuscripts. The librarians were men who not only 
knew about books but also knew what was in them. They and 
a little group of other scholars, supported by the government, 
prepared definitive and critical editions of all the great Greek 
classics, thus preserving them in authentic form for unending 
generations of students. Other aspects of the Hellenistic Age 
were its cosmopolitanism, which bred a wider tolerance for 
variety in cultural standards than the Greek world would per¬ 
mit, and its humanity, which was exemplified by the elimina¬ 
tion of the worst features of slavery and by the movement for 


THE GREEK HERITAGE 


21 


the substitution of arbitration for war. On the eve of the Roman 
conquest, then, the eastern Mediterranean had reached the 
highest point of civilized development it had ever known. 

For Further Reading 

J. H. Breasted, Ancient Times 
G. W. Botsford, Hellenic History 
C. E. Robinson, History of Greece 

L. van Hook, Greek Life and Thought, a portrayal of Greek Civilization 
William W. Tarn, Hellenistic Civilization 
R. W. Livingstone (Ed.), Legacy of Greece 


CHAPTER THREE 


THE GREATNESS AND DECLINE OF ROME 

The principal achievement of the Roman Empire was the 
extension of Hellenistic civilization northward to the line of 
the Rhine and the Danube and westward through Spain and 
Gaul to far-off Britain. What an important work this was we 
may realize when we stop to consider that the leadership in 
western civilization in modern times has come almost wholly 
from the west and north of Europe. 

The Beginnings of Rome 

Italy is a narrow peninsula extending from the Alps south¬ 
ward into the Mediterranean some six hundred miles. It is 
four times the size of Greece and has an even larger proportion 
of fertile land suitable for agriculture or grazing. The slope of 
the peninsula is toward the west and most of its good harbors 
lie on the western side, so that Italy definitely belongs to the 
western half of the Mediterranean. 

This fertile peninsula, warm and sunny, has had (and still 
has) an irresistible attraction for northern peoples. Traces of 
men from the north as far back as the Stone Age have been 
found in many parts of Italy. The Alps have never been an 
effective barrier. Italic tribes of the Indo-European group came 
down into the peninsula from the north about the same time 
that the Greeks entered the iEgean world, that is, about 2000 
b.c. These Italic tribes settled in central Italy south and east 
of the Tiber. They cultivated the soil in a primitive way, but 
subsisted mainly on their flocks and herds. About 750 b.c. 
these tribes were conquered by a much more highly civilized 
people who, in the meantime, had settled north of the Tiber. 
These were the Estrucans. Their racial and cultural origins con¬ 
stitute one of the unsolved problems of history. Seemingly they 
came from Lydia, in Asia Minor, about 1000 b.c., with a well 

22 


GREATNESS AND DECLINE OF ROME 


23 


developed civilization of the Oriental type. For four centuries 
the Estruscans were the most powerful people in Italy and 
ruled the western coast from the bay of Naples almost to Genoa. 
For two and one-half centuries, 750 to 500 b.c., Etruscan kings 
ruled Rome, and the earliest Roman civilization is largely 
Etruscan in origin. In architecture, in military organization 
and the art of fortification, in road-paving and engineering, 
even in the taking of a census and in the art of divination, the 
Romans were profoundly indebted to their northern neighbors 
and conquerors. The names of many of the oldest and noblest 
Roman families were originally Etruscan and represent de¬ 
scent from the Etruscan aristocracy. But Etruscan power de¬ 
clined suddenly and permanently. Defeated in a decisive 
way by the Greeks of southern Italy, in 474 b.c., disaster 
overwhelmed them in the north, also, through an invasion 
of Gauls. 


Conquests of the Roman Republic 

The decline of Etruria freed the Romans and for the next 
thousand years, the last five hundred before Christ and the 
first five hundred after, the story of Rome fills the pages of 
history. Under the Republic, for five hundred years, the 
story is first of all one of conquest. Rome’s conquests were 
not so swift or so spectacular, perhaps, as some that have 
been seen, but they were more permanent. The early Romans 
were a race of soldiers, sturdy owner-farmers owing military 
service. It has been pointed out that Rome’s conquest of Italy 
was in the nature of an agricultural expansion, and an ex¬ 
tending of the obligation of military service and some, at least, 
of the privileges of Roman citizenship to the Latin and Italic 
peoples. Of peoples farther afield, such as the Greek city-states 
in southern Italy and Sicily, Rome made allies. By 250 b.c. 
Rome had united all Italy under her authority excepting the 
lands of the Gauls in the Po valley. Military colonies, linked to 
Rome by excellent military roads, ensured the permanence of 
Roman authority. Rome’s central position in the peninsula, 
on the interior line of communication, had been of the greatest 
strategic value. All roads led to Rome. 


24 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Outside of Italy Roman conquest was commercial rather 
than agricultural, and a battle to the death ensued with Car¬ 
thage, mistress of the western Mediterranean. Begun in 264 
b.c., this titanic struggle ended only with the complete de¬ 
struction of the rival city more than a century later (146 b.c.), 
—a fate which Rome would undoubtedly have suffered had 
Carthage won. Meanwhile, and as a consequence of her long 
contest with Carthage, Rome had conquered Cisalpine Gaul, 
thus rounding out Italy, had annexed the islands of the western 
Mediterranean, and had secured a free hand in Spain. Turn¬ 
ing against the allies of Carthage in the eastern Mediterranean, 
Rome first overran Macedonia and then the whole ^Egean 
world. The destruction of Corinth came in the same year as 
that of Carthage. The smaller states of Asia Minor and the 
Syrian shore were next conquered. The annexation of Egypt 
came late, however, occurring in what may be called the last 
year of the Republic (30 b.c.). Meanwhile conquests not so 
spectacular but of much greater consequence for the future 
were taking place in the west and north. In eight years, 58-50 
b.c., Caesar conquered Gaul and even ventured into Britain. 

By the end of the period of the Republic, then, Roman power 
had been extended throughout the Mediterranean world, making 
the Roman empire the largest the world had yet seen. How is 
this astounding success to be explained? One important factor 
was geographical, for the Mediterranean basin might seem des¬ 
tined to be the seat of an empire. It contains three million 
square miles of the finest lands in the world, with resources 
greatly varied. Extremes of temperature are unknown. The 
sea is a broad highway of communication. Physical features 
vary greatly, but there is a certain geological uniformity. The 
plant life and animal life are everywhere much the same. Even 
the peoples are very much the same in physical characteristics. 

Another factor of great importance was Rome's military 
system. The early Romans were a race of soldiers, sturdy farm¬ 
ers owning their own land. As Rome's agricultural expansion 
in Italy proceeded, and with it the obligation of military serv¬ 
ice, Rome came to have a citizen army of 300,000 men, with 
an equal number of allied troops. This was by far the largest 


GREATNESS AND DECLINE OF ROME 


25 


army ever known in the ancient world. Further, Rome made 
important improvements in military tactics. The phalanx of 
heavily armed foot soldiers was replaced by the much more 
easily manoeuvred legion. This was divided lengthwise and 
crosswise into small units such as cohorts, maniples (whence 
“manipulate”), and centuries. Roman leaders became very 
skillful in manoeuvering these units in time of battle and in 
working out “plays”, like modern football coaches. The most 
skillful strategist of them all was Julius Caesar. Roman armies, 
moreover, were subject to the severest discipline. Indeed, the 
Romans were an extraordinarily well-disciplined people, a fact 
which is also attested by their excellent legal system and which 
may even be seen in the precision of their language. Militarism 
ran right through the Roman state. Most offices in the Re¬ 
public had a military aspect. No citizen could be a candidate 
for public office until he had served in ten campaigns. A further 
element in Rome’s success was the fact that the direction of 
public affairs during the period of conquest, under the Republic, 
was in the hands of “the greatest council of rulers which ever 
grew up in the ancient world, or perhaps in any age,” the Roman 
Senate. This body of three hundred men had come to include 
all those who had gained most experience in government and 
public affairs. Ultimate authority rested with the people, but 
in actual practice the Republic was an aristocratic state, the 
inexperienced democracy being content to allow the Senate to 
rule in its name. 

The Republic Becomes an Empire 

The Roman Republic could conquer an empire, but it could 
not govern it. Toward the close of the republican period the 
failure of the Republic was patent to all; the Roman state 
seemed about to disappear. The reasons for this were many. 
The easy wealth obtainable in Rome’s many conquered prov¬ 
inces by Roman governors, contractors, and tax-collectors 
created a spirit of cupidity in the governing class which the 
Senate was not able and, perhaps, was unwilling to check. To 
be chosen consul in Rome was deemed merely the stepping-stone 
to a provincial governorship. As easy wealth flowed into Rome 


26 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the old simplicity and austerity of Roman family life disap¬ 
peared. The upper class developed showy and expensive habits. 
Further, as the rich grew richer the poor grew poorer. An ag¬ 
ricultural revolution set in in Italy, resulting in the complete 
elimination of the class of small farmers from which Rome’s 
citizen-army had been drawn. Many years of absence on cam¬ 
paigns, the devastation wrought by Hannibal’s armies, the 
competition of wheat from Sicily and northern Africa, and the 
Senate’s unwise policy of granting vast tracts of government 
land to a few privileged men of wealth, all combined to uproot 
the small farmers and drive them to the cities. There was little 
regular employment to be had in the cities, for there was no 
real industrial system in the ancient world. Rising young 
politicians courting the public favor began to feed and to 
entertain the urban multitudes (panem et circenses ); and the 
state itself felt obliged to pursue this policy. 

The Republic was doomed, and during the last century of 
its life various individuals undertook to reorganize the state. 
Of these the most statesmanlike and humane was Julius Caesar; 
but he was cut down by Republican fanatics who failed to see 
the trend of the times. Caesar’s nephew Octavian took up 
and largely fulfilled Caesar’s plans and founded the Empire. 
Under Octavian and his immediate successors an imperial 
organization was developed which saved the Roman state 
and gave it five hundred years more of life. 

These five centuries of Roman life are of vital importance. 
The earlier centuries were a period of prolonged peace. Life 
and property were secure as never before in the history of 
the world. There ensued an activity of trade and of travel 
throughout the Empire and an exchange of ideas and customs, 
of cultural values and art forms, as well as of commodities, 
on a scale unequalled before. All this was greatly facilitated 
by the protection of the Roman law, by a coinage system every¬ 
where valid, by a common language, and by excellent trans¬ 
portation facilities. The older racial, religious, and political 
boundaries in the Mediterranean basin were broken down. 
Hellenistic civilization was thoroughly assimilated by the West. 
Oriental religions became popular at Rome, among them Chris- 


& V. CAMB. MASS 
















28 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


tianity. In a word, there came into being a cosmopolitan civili¬ 
zation which was coterminous with the Roman Empire and 
which we may call Roman. 

Roman Civilization 

Roman civilization has been called a mosaic of various 
elements, mostly borrowed, but held together by some of Rome’s 
excellent mortar. Certainly the borrowed elements were both 
numerous and important—Egyptian, Punic, Syrian, Chaldean, 
even Gallic, and above all Hellenic, for “ captive Greece had 
led the conqueror captive.” But there was a Roman element, 
too, which cannot be ignored. In the whole range of litera¬ 
ture Cicero’s letters have rarely been equalled, and never sur¬ 
passed. Livy’s history is a very great historical composition, 
with greater literary than strictly historical merits, perhaps. 
Vergil’s “iEneid” is a national epic of great merit, glorifying 
the reign of law and order ushered in by the advent of the 
Empire. The works of Caesar and Horace are more familiar to 
modern students than the classics of modern literature. In 
philosophy the Romans were not original, but Seneca, Epi¬ 
curus, and Marcus Aurelius interpreted in a noble and memo¬ 
rable way the philosophy of the Stoics, which made an especial 
appeal to educated Romans. 

Valuable as Latin literature is, however, the language in 
which that literature was written has been of even greater use¬ 
fulness to western peoples. It became, during the lifetime of 
the Empire, the language of several western provinces where 
it lives on to-day in various Romance languages. One of these 
Romance languages, Norman French, had an influence upon 
our own language so profound as to make Anglo-Saxon, the 
early form of English, almost a foreign tongue to English- 
speaking people of the present. Further, Latin became the 
language of the mediaeval church throughout Europe, and it 
is still the language of one of the great branches of the Chris¬ 
tian church. For more than a thousand years Latin was the 
language of mediaeval learning, a universal language, making 
international education really possible. During the middle 
ages a literature was produced in Latin which is as worthy of 


GREATNESS AND DECLINE OF ROME 


29 


study as the classics of ancient Rome. Latin remains to-day 
an inexhaustible quarry for all western peoples in their con¬ 
struction of a scientific terminology. 

In science the Roman output was large and its importance 
considerable. Pliny the Elder, who perished in the volcanic 
eruption which destroyed Pompeii, 79 a.d., wrote a “Natural 
History” which is really a compendium of materials for a his¬ 
tory of civilization. Pliny’s attitude, however, is not consist¬ 
ently scientific; he has many lapses into superstition. Ptolemy, 
an Egyptian of the second century, a.d., gathered together 
all the geographical and astronomical knowledge of his day. 
“Whoever may have originated them, all the leading achieve¬ 
ments in these fields are preserved . . . through his labors.” 
Galen, a native of Pergamum, in Asia Minor, who lived in the 
same century, became and for centuries remained the leading 
authority on medicine. He was responsible for a genuine ad¬ 
vance in this field over previous ages, making large use of the 
experimental method. 

In architecture the Romans made substantial advance over 
the Greeks. The Romans knew how to use stone or brick and 
cement in constructing a vault, dome, or half-dome. Thus 
they could adquately roof over a large enclosed space. The 
Greeks had never succeeded in doing this. The triumphal arch, 
the most expressive symbol of Rome’s power, was developed 
by the Romans to its final form; our own arches are mere copies. 
Roman sculpture was in the main an imitation of Greek models. 
An exception to this were the excellent portrait busts, from 
which we may learn so much of the quality of the great Roman 
men of action. 

Rome’s greatest original contribution, undoubtedly, was in 
the field of law and politics. Here were elements of the highest 
importance for the future history of Europe. One such ele¬ 
ment was the idea of unity. The greatest civilization the world 
had known had found its political expression in the most highly 
unified as well as the most powerful empire the world had known. 
All authority had come to be centered in the emperor. In form 
the Senate still ruled, but all the great departments of state cen¬ 
tered in the emperor. As imperator he commanded the army. 


30 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


As pontifex maximus he was the head of the state religion. 
As princeps he was chief of the Senate. The emperor appointed 
and removed all officials. He was supreme judge and supreme 
law giver. So awful was his power that he was given some of 
the attributes of the gods while living, and after death was 
accorded membership in the family of the gods. In every pro¬ 
vincial forum of the empire there were two shrines, one to the 
reigning Augustus and the other to Rome. The idea of unity had 
thus become a religion. Roman unity made possible the early 
and rapid spread of Christianity. It found expression, later, in 
the papacy, which united in one Christian family all the peoples 
of western Europe. It gave the middle ages the imperial idea 
as a political heritage. 


Roman Law 

Another of Rome’s contributions of great importance for 
the future of Europe was her law. Roman law is the most 
perfect fruit of the Roman genius. The civil law, applicable to 
Roman citizens, was codified as early as 450 b.c. (the Twelve 
Tables). This early code, naturally, is based upon elementary 
principles and it is full of primitive procedure. Yet such was 
the skill of the Roman judges in legal reasoning and in extend¬ 
ing the principles of the Twelve Tables to meet the needs of 
a changing society that the Romans lived under this code until 
the year 176 b.c. In the meantime Rome had been extending 
her power throughout Italy and into the Mediterranean, and 
another body of law, applicable to non-citizens, had grown up 
(jus gentium). In the year 176 b.c. the two legal systems fused 
into one, a fact symbolizing Rome’s emergence from the status 
of city-state into that of world empire. In time Roman law 
came to include the customs of a wide variety of peoples, the 
ethical and philosophical ideas of diverse cultures. To reduce 
this variety to order, to construct a synthesis based upon fixed 
principles, was a task to which Roman jurists applied their 
minds. Their concept came to be that of a natural law based 
upon equity, a law for all men of whatever race or creed. The 
most famous of the Roman jurists flourished in the second cen¬ 
tury a.d. —Ulpian, Papinian, and others. Their writings con- 


GREATNESS AND DECLINE OF ROME 


31 


stitute “the most original and constructive branch of Latin 
literature.” Roman law is the basis of the legal systems of 
most of the states of continental Europe to-day. It has greatly 
influenced its only rival in the West, the English Common 
Law. Furthermore, the principles of Roman law are the basis 
of international law throughout the world. 

Political Weakness 

In our survey of Roman civilization thus far we have been 
concerned with elements of a positive and constructive charac¬ 
ter which have entered into the main stream of western civili¬ 
zation. But there were elements of weakness in the Roman state 
and in Roman society. The most obvious weakness was a 
political one. As we have noted, the Roman state had become 
a completely organized despotism concentrating all authority 
in the emperor. This made for uniformity of law and efficiency 
in administration and was in itself a great improvement over 
the later years of the Republic. But unfortunately the advan¬ 
tages of the imperial organization were almost completely 
negatived by the fact that no good plan had ever been developed 
for filling the imperial office. The hereditary principle, so use¬ 
ful and so powerful in the later European monarchies, could not 
establish itself. There are but three instances in the five cen¬ 
turies of the Empire of a son succeeding his father; and there 
is no example of three successive generations in the imperial 
office. Nor was there, to cite another modern usage, any good 
election scheme. The army, and more especially the Praetorian 
guard, usually decided who should succeed the reigning emperor. 
On one occasion, in 193 a.d., the Praetorian guard sold the 
office at auction to the highest bidder, realizing about $1000 
apiece. Moreover, it was but seldom that those interested were 
content to let nature take its course in the life of a reigning em¬ 
peror. Of the eighteen emperors between 180 and 244 a.d. all 
but one met death by violence. This was most serious. It 
meant that an emperor, even if he happened to have the states¬ 
manlike insight to see and the energy to meet the needs and 
dangers of his time, was almost certain to be cut off before he 
could do his work. Thus no emperor, however able, could count 


32 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


on any certain tenure of office, however brief, in which to under¬ 
take measures of reconstruction. And yet from no other source 
could such measures, or any measure, proceed. 

Economic Depression 

Another important source of weakness in the later Empire 
was the decline of agriculture, of commerce, and even of popu¬ 
lation. In agriculture developments which had set in before 
the end of the Republic continued under the Empire. Small 
farms continued to disappear before the advance of large es¬ 
tates. In Nero’s time six landlords owned one-half the farm 
land of the province of Africa. By the fifth century practically 
the whole Empire was in the hands of a landed aristocracy. The 
farming methods of the big proprietors were not enlightened. 
The usual procedure, at first, was exploitation of the soil by 
slave labor. The farming unit was large, often thousands of 
acres. The land was tilled by gangs of slaves under an over¬ 
seer, sometimes a slave of more than average intelligence or 
a freedman. In the earlier days of this “capitalist” farming it 
was held to be more economical to work slaves to death and buy 
new ones than to treat them humanely. In the later centuries 
the conditions of the farm hands improved somewhat and slaves 
began to give place to coloni. These were semi-free agricultural 
laborers, still bound to the soil but enjoying a few personal 
privileges and some property rights. The appearance of the 
coloni did not check agricultural decline, however. Farming 
methods continued to be primitive. Tools were poor. There 
was no scientific use of fertilizers. The soil was becoming ex¬ 
hausted, or “tired”, as Roman writers put it. As the soil be¬ 
came less productive rural population decreased. 

It is important to note that the free population decreased 
faster than the slave. This is especially true of the curiales , 
or class of small landholders. They stood next in rank to the 
senators and had been the chief reliance of the state. On them 
had fallen the chief burden of, or responsibility for, the pay¬ 
ment of taxes, since the poor were unable to pay and the wealthy 
avoided payment. Further, the state had employed the curiales 
as its body of local government officials, as supervisors of 


GREATNESS AND DECLINE OF ROME 


33 


streets and roads, as apportioners and collectors of taxes, and 
so on. As the number of curiales diminished their burdens cor¬ 
respondingly increased and the few remaining members of the 
order sought in every way to escape, either by making their way 
into the landed aristocracy by buying senatorial rank, or by 
allowing themselves to sink into the class of semi-dependent 
coloni below them. The government sought to prevent their 
escape. To be thrust into the curiale status became a recognized 
punishment in courts of law. The emperor Julian, in a law of 
363 a.d., offered the curiale an escape if he became the father 
of thirteen children. 


Barbarization 

Worst of all, and beginning as early as the first century a.d., 
Rome was becoming steadily and increasingly barbarized. This 
may be seen in many ways. Barbarians were filtering into the 
Empire as slaves. When Alaric and his West Goths neared 
Rome, in 410 a.d., more than forty thousand slaves of Gothic 
blood escaped from that city to the barbarian camp. The Ro¬ 
man army had long ceased to be an army of citizens and had 
become an army of mercenaries, chiefly of barbarian blood. 
This does not mean that these hired soldiers did not fight loyally 
for their employers. Such soldiers, however, would not have 
the exalted devotion to the Roman state that might be expected 
of a citizen army. 

There were other ways in which Rome was being barbarized, 
less obvious but more important. The Roman state and Roman 
civilization itself had been built up and maintained by a rela¬ 
tively small class, a real aristocracy, which had furnished Rome 
with nearly all her great soldiers, political leaders, men of 
letters, and scientists. This class had developed a decent and 
dignified mode of living, a rational habit of mind, a knowledge 
of science, and a degree of culture which furnished the standards 
of Roman civilized life. All other classes in a certain measure had 
assimilated these standards. Even so had Rome Romanized 
the freshly conquered provincials of Spain, Gaul, and Britain. 
But in the later centuries of the Empire the assimilative force 
of Roman civilization declined greatly. An important cause 


34 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


of this was the race-suicide of the Roman aristocracy. Early 
marriage and the rearing of a large family no longer interested 
the cultured Roman. He failed to reproduce his kind. The cul¬ 
tivated gentleman had dropped out of the army still earlier. 

Still another factor in the barbarizing process, and this of a 
positive nature, was the influence of a new mentality, the 
mentality of the masses. This is to be seen in the new Oriental 
religions, including Christianity, which had a great vogue among 
the masses. The Roman state was built upon the conception 
of the subordination of the individual to the purposes of the 
state. The chief end of man was to serve the state, to make it 
prosperous, and to uphold and extend its power. The state, in 
turn, undertook to look after the interests of its subjects, to 
foster civilization, to be “the mainspring of the ascending 
movement of man.” The new Oriental religions had quite a 
different concept of man and the state. The chief end of man 
was communion with God and the salvation of his soul. The 
very existence of the state was a matter of comparative insig¬ 
nificance. Indeed, it was deemed better to withdraw from the 
service of the state—the profession of arms, of politics, of law, 
of the civil service—and become a recluse. Under the influence 
of this mentality “a general disintegration of the body politic 
set in. . . . Men refused to defend their country, and even to 
continue their kind.” 

Rome Displaced by Constantinople 

The disintegration of the Roman state was most apparent 
in the western or Roman half of the Empire. The city of Rome, 
in the later centuries of the Empire, was not a good capital. 
It was too full of republican sentiment to suit the more despotic 
tastes of the later Roman emperors, too full of paganism to suit 
the Christian emperors. Oriental, Greek, and Christian ele¬ 
ments grew greatly in strength during the last centuries of the 
Empire and these were much more at home in the East than in 
the West. Besides, Rome was too far from the frontier, and as 
the defensive strength of the Roman state declined barbarian 
pressure increased. It became a matter of decisive importance 
for the emperor to be nearer the frontier. Diocletian, in 292 a.d., 


GREATNESS AND DECLINE OF ROME 


35 


made the first attempt to meet this need by establishing 
four capitals nearer the frontier, each with a ruler, a court, and 
an army. This plan was not continued as it was too elaborate 
and too expensive. Constantine contributed to the decline of 
the West by founding another capital in the East. He looked 
over several sites and even began to build on one of them but 
finally settled upon Byzantium, on the Bosporus. This was a 
marvellous choice, for Constantinople, as Napoleon said, “ de¬ 
serves an empire.” Constantine never liked Rome. On a visit 
to that city in 326 a.d. he declined to join in an ancient re¬ 
publican ceremony and this gave great offence. He never re¬ 
turned. The fissure between East and West widened when 
Valentinian, in 364 a.d., divided the Empire into an eastern 
and a western division. Valens became co-emperor at Constan¬ 
tinople. The western capital was moved from Rome itself to 
Milan. Reunited later, the Empire was again divided on the 
death of Theodosius, in 395 a.d., by his two sons. Arcadius 
ruled the East at Constantinople. Honorius ruled the West from 
Ravenna, which now definitely displaced the Eternal City as 
the seat of government. 

For Further Reading 

In this as in subsequent lists of additional reading general works 
are given first. Where a number of related topics have been con¬ 
sidered in the same chapter the works listed have been grouped 
accordingly. 

J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 
chap. 1 

Cambridge Mediaeval History, I, chaps. 1, 2, and 8 

F. Tenney, History of Rome 

G. Showerman, Rome and the Romans 

S. Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire 
F. Gregorovius, Rome in the Middle Ages, vol. I 
M. Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire 


CHAPTER FOUR 


EARLY HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 

Oriental Religions in the Later Roman Empire 

The most important element of all in that cosmopolitan 
civilization we call Roman was Christianity. During the second 
and third centuries a.d. Rome was getting many things from 
the East. The Roman imperial office began to take on the color 
and spirit of an Oriental despotism. Roman law was greatly 
influenced by eastern philosophy, the most famous law school 
of the later Empire being at Beirut, in Syria. Even the grain 
on which Rome fed came from the East. But the most important 
influence from the Orient was religion. The West was in need 
of a religious revival. The old state religion, revived by Augus¬ 
tus, had lost its hold on the Roman people; its temples stood 
empty. Yet all classes were hungry for religion. The toiling, 
sweating masses, free or slave, in the great cities, with long hours 
and low wages and miserable living conditions, were turning 
to the new religions of the East for relief. Many of the Roman 
intellectuals, also, sought deliverance from the enslavement of 
physical appetite, the endless gratification of which had brought 
no peace of mind. “Salvation”, a “way of return to God”, 
were sought on all hands. 

In general, all these new religions from the Orient gave the 
same answer to the seeker for salvation. This was, detachment 
from the world and strict discipline of body and soul. The in¬ 
fluence of the material world was deplored and the value of 
the contemplative life emphasized. The worship of Mithras was 
brought from Persia, of the Dea Syra from Syria, of Isis from 
Egypt, of the Christ from Judea. Temples to Mithras have 
been found in Britain. Symbols of the worship of Isis have been 
unearthed in the Isle of Man, on the western coast of Britain. 
Each of these religions had its own ceremonial purification, 
cleansing from sin, freeing the sinner from the sense of guilt. 

36 


EARLY HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


37 


The earnest seeker often tried one religion after another in his 
search for peace of soul. The worship of Isis was especially 
elaborate and popular. It had a well organized clergy, with 
special vestments and the tonsure. It had a liturgy and a prayer 
book. This religion proclaimed “a suffering and all-merciful 
Mother Goddess who yearns to ease the woes of mankind.” Un¬ 
believers were called pagans. Its appeal was to all classes and 
at one time it drew thousands where Christianity drew hun¬ 
dreds. An even greater rival of Christianity was Neo-Platonism. 
Its founder was one Plotinus, an Egyptian (d. 269 a.d.), and 
his principal disciples were from the Hellenized cities of Syria. 
Neo-Platonists believed in an Absolute Being, the great Cause 
of all things. They held that every religion is valid in some 
degree, depending on how fully it apprehends the great Cause. 
Every deity, therefore, whatever its name or sign, had its place 
in Neo-Platonism. Christ was placed between Dionysos and Isis. 

Early Success of Christianity 

Christianity, then, was but one of many Oriental religions 
in favor in the West. Its rivals were numerous and well estab¬ 
lished. Moreover, they anticipated many of the Christian re¬ 
ligion’s good points. And yet by the close of the fourth century 
a.d. Christianity had become the state religion of the Roman 
Empire. The reasons for this astounding triumph must be 
sought in the early centuries of the history of Christianity. 
Jesus Himself, though a Jew, with a mind saturated in the sacred 
literature of the Jews and bringing His message to His own 
people, found that message rejected by the official leaders of 
His people. The Jewish religion had become an institution of 
definite rites and ceremonies with a powerful priesthood and 
a codified law. It was an intensely national religion for which 
the Jewish people had made great sacrifices and undergone 
much suffering. “The powers that be” in the Jewish faith 
were not likely to welcome one who taught a simpler, far more 
spiritual, and universal faith. They were convinced, and they 
found it easy to persuade the Roman procurator Pilate of the 
fact, that Jesus was a menace to the peace and safety of the 
Jewish religion and the Jewish people. 


38 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Rejected by the official Jewish world, the few Jewish follow¬ 
ers of Christ sought their first converts among the Hellenized 
Jews scattered broadcast through the Roman Empire, East and 
West. Every large city had its Jewish colony. These Jews had 
been greatly influenced by the cosmopolitan civilization of 
Rome. They had ceased to observe all of the hard and fast 
rules of Jewish worship. They had even won many friends and 
admirers of their faith among the Gentiles. To these “Jews 
of dispersion” went a Christian convert of genius, with a burn¬ 
ing faith and invincible missionary energy, Paul of Tarsus. 

Tarsus was a busy commercial city of Asia Minor and a 
center of Hellenic culture. His family being well-to-do, Paul 
received the best education going and learned to write and speak 
Greek fluently. As a Jew the young man was intensely loyal 
to his ancestral faith. His conversion to Christianity changed 
the whole course of his life; indeed it probably changed the 
course of the history of Christianity. The earlier apostles 
had emphasized the purely Jewish aspects of the life and mis¬ 
sion of Jesus. He was the divinely appointed founder of a new 
Jewish state. Under Paul’s leadership the Christian church 
lost its local and national character and became universal in 
its scope. In Paul’s view Christ came into the world not to 
found a Jewish kingdom but to show a new way of life for all 
men. Christ’s “kingdom”, Paul affirmed, was one of “righteous¬ 
ness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” 

The first non-Jewish church was founded by Paul at Antioch, 
the greatest center of Hellenic culture in Syria. From Antioch 
the great apostle set forth on his famous missionary journeys. 
His plan was to preach the gospel in the larger cities of the 
Empire, trusting that his message would gradually penetrate 
to the surrounding countryside. Having visited many of the 
larger cities in the East, Paul finally set out for Rome. There 
he suffered martyrdom, thus failing in his dream of carrying 
the “good news” to Spain and other parts of the West. 

The work of Paul and the other missionaries of the early 
church bore much fruit. Christianity made headway among 
the competing religions of the Empire, at first slowly, and then 
with ever greater momentum. In the first place, the Chris- 


EARLY HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


39 


tian religion was a magnificent fighting faith, with a magnificent 
appeal. It claimed to be the one true religion; it would make 
no compromise with nor would it tolerate another faith. Sec¬ 
ondly, Christianity presented a new concept of God. He was 
a personal Deity, ready and willing to lay down His life for 
each of His followers, however humble; a Deity Who had taken 
upon Himself the form of man and died a shameful death upon 
the Cross in man’s behalf. Further, Christianity presented a 
new concept of man as one whose chief desire should be to serve 
his fellow men. Other religions had come close to this concep¬ 
tion of the “brother man”, but Christianity first preached it in a 
way all could understand. The earnest seeker, having surveyed 
the competing religions, must inevitably choose Christianity. 

This was especially true of the urban masses, among whom 
Christianity had nearly all its early success. Early Christianity 
was a religion of the cities, spreading from city to city along 
the trade routes. The misery of the toiling masses in the great 
cities was a fertile soil for the Word of Life. A gospel of broth¬ 
erly love was in startling contrast to the brutal conditions of 
life surrounding the average man. Moreover, this Gospel 
everywhere found practical expression in relief of distress 
among widows and orphans, among the sick and the aged, and 
among the convicts who worked the mines and quarries under 
conditions inexpressibly cruel. Much of the early spread of 
Christianity among the masses was doubtless facilitated by 
the mutual benefit associations {collegia tenuiorum) which had 
existed from early times among the poorest of the working 
classes in the great cities. To the oppressed masses the “good 
news” of a God Who cared tremendously for them was doubt¬ 
less a glimpse of Heaven itself. 

Christianity and the Roman Government 

The Roman government might possibly have stamped out 
Christianity if it had ever been really disposed to do so. But, 
as we have seen, the Empire was essentially tolerant. Every 
conquered city or tribe was allowed to keep its own gods and 
worship them in its own way. Conquered subjects must, of 
course, accept the official Roman religion and set up and main- 


40 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


tain altars to Augustus and to Rome. It is not easy to distin¬ 
guish between this regulation and the imposing of an obligation 
to display and salute the flag at the present time. No ancient 
state differentiated between church and state as we do. Early 
Christians came into conflict with the Roman authorities for 
one of two reasons, usually. First, they made war on the local 
religions, claiming theirs as the only true religion. This made 
trouble for the Roman officials. The riot caused by a clash 
between the Christians and the followers of the local goddess 
Diana at Ephesus is well known. Secondly, Christians com¬ 
monly refused to take part in the patriotic worship of Augustus 
and Rome. Their religion would not tolerate these gods. Hence 
the Christians were rather more noticeably unpatriotic than 
a little group would be to-day who stubbornly refused to stand 
while the “Star Spangled Banner” was being sung or played. 
Every one noted that a Christian, in crossing the square of 
the local forum, did not take a pinch of incense from the bowl 
and cast it into the flames that burned before the bust of Augus¬ 
tus. To suspect such an one of sedition was easy. 

General persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire 
came late and was never carried forward long or with vigor. 
The martyrs proved to be the seed of the church. Men and 
women of all classes met their death, horrible as it might be, 
with every indication of joy in the privilege of thus testifying 
of their faith. The merits of the new faith were thus brought 
poignantly to the knowledge of the tens of thousands who 
crowded the Roman arenas. Christianity was never in any danger 
of extermination. In the severest years at Rome churches were 
maintained, albeit secretly, in Rome itself, not in the catacombs 
outside the walls. The first general persecution was ordered 
by the emperor Decius in 249 a.d., though Christians had 
previously encountered opposition and even persecution in 
various localities. The last of the general persecutions began in 
303 a.d. under Diocletian. In 311 a.d. came the edict of tolera¬ 
tion of Galerius, and this was revived and extended, two years 
later, by the famous edict of Constantine. This emperor is 
accounted the first of the Christian emperors and his power¬ 
ful patronage brought great advancement to the Christian 


EARLY HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


41 


church. Its clergy were excused from burdensome political 
duties; its property was exempted from taxation; its members 
were no longer compelled to attend certain heathen celebra¬ 
tions. The church was allowed to receive legacies and so began 
to acquire property through the gifts of the faithful. Constan¬ 
tine himself gave the church in Rome the great palace of the 
Lateran family, later the seat of the mediaeval papacy. 

The Conversion of Constantine 

The circumstances that attended the “conversion” of this 
famous Christian are of more than passing interest. Constan¬ 
tine was one of the several rivals for the throne on the death 
of Galerius in 311. He was commanding the legions in far off 
Britain when the news reached him, and he started at once for 
Italy at the head of his troops. A Roman campaign for election 
was more than the figure of speech it has now become. Rival 
candidates commonly fought it out on the field of battle. Yet 
there was great need, too, of attaching to oneself powerful 
parties, of rudimentary appeals to public opinion. The Chris¬ 
tians of the Empire formed one such party. So numerous had 
they become that their influence might well prove decisive. 
Galerius had just granted them toleration. The candidate who 
seemed most likely to continue this blessed boon would find 
the Christians his steadfast supporters. Constantine repre¬ 
sented the best of paganism; he was a monotheist and tolerant. 
He had been coming closer and closer to Christianity. As he 
neared Rome his principal rival in the West, Maxentius, came 
out of the city a few miles to oppose him. Constantine manoeu¬ 
vred his enemy into an evil position, compelling him to fight 
with the Tiber at his back and the Mulvian bridge as his sole 
avenue of escape. While the battle raged it is said that Con¬ 
stantine saw in the sky a cross with the legend, in hoc signo vinces. 
Conquer he did, and Maxentius perished in the river. Meanwhile 
another rival in the East, Maximian, had issued an edict of 
toleration to gain the Christian “vote”. Constantine’s edict 
followed, and it granted the widest tolerance of all. Every 
man was to have the right to choose his own religion and to 
practice it in his own way. 


42 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


It is estimated that at this time nearly half of the East was 
Christian but that in the West the proportion was not more 
than one-fifth, and in some places only one-tenth. Therefore 
Constantine moved slowly at first. He could not afford to risk 
a pagan reaction. He strove hard for Christian unity at the 
Council of Nicsea, in 352 a.d., presiding over it and winning 
over all but two of the three hundred bishops present to a con¬ 
demnation of the Arian doctrines which threatened the unity 
of the church. Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of his 
reign, in 337 a.d., Constantine went to Rome and removed 
the altar of Victory from the Senate House, the pagan symbol 
of Rome’s all-conquering greatness. In the same year he died 
at Nicomedia, “clothed in stainless white”. Constantine had 
always been careful not to offend pagan sentiment too deeply 
and had even allowed a temple to be erected to himself and 
had permitted himself to be worshipped. After his death he was 
accorded the title of Divus in the usual manner. 

Christianity Becomes the State Religion 
Later emperors (Gratian, 375-383, and Theodosius, 379- 
395) withdrew state support from heathen temples and accorded 
state support to the Christian church. In 395 Theodosius ex¬ 
tinguished the sacred fire of Vesta. Christianity then became 
the state religion and indeed the only legal one. Heathen wor¬ 
ship was limited and heretics were persecuted. From an ob¬ 
scure, despised sect the Christians had now become the “best 
people” and their religion the official creed of a world empire. 
There is no more marvellous story in human history. The older 
faiths died hard, lingering long in the smaller centers and the 
remoter regions of the Empire. This fact is embodied in the 
word “pagan” (from paganus, villager) and in the word “hea¬ 
then” (from heath). Triumphant Christianity meanwhile ap¬ 
propriated from its defeated rival what it would, whether it were 
columns from heathen temples to adorn her churches, or the 
titles and insignia of the Caesars to lend authority to the pope. 

Formative Influences in the Early Church 
In the meantime the Christian church was slowly develop¬ 
ing into the great institution that was destined to dominate 


EARLY HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


43 


the life of man in the middle ages. Many forces were shaping 
it. The earlier followers of Christ were all Jews, and even when 
they were cast out of the synagogues they continued their 
Jewish ways and claimed to belong to Judaism. In the year 
70 a.d. a large part of Jerusalem, including the Temple, was 
destroyed by the Romans after a Jewish rebellion. This catas¬ 
trophe was followed by the more complete severing of the 
Christian Jews from their orthodox brethren. The Christian¬ 
ized Jews still clung to the Jewish sacred writings, however. 
These writings had been translated into the Greek language 
a century before the coming of Christ for the benefit of the 
Jews who were scattered through the cities of the East. In 
this form the Hebrew scriptures entered our Bible as the Old 
Testament. 

Greek influences upon the development of the Christian 
church, though not so fundamental as the Jewish, were numer¬ 
ous and important. Christianity made converts among the 
intellectuals of the Hellenic world from the beginning and the 
number of these increased as time went on. When a Greek 
scholar became a Christian he did not throw away his love of 
literature, his knowledge of philosophy, and his delight in the 
beautiful. On the contrary, he drew upon all these for the em¬ 
bellishment of Christian worship and the refinement of Chris¬ 
tian teaching. In Greek hands Christian baptism and the Lord’s 
supper were transformed into elaborate and beautiful sacra¬ 
ments full of mystic meanings. The teachings of Christ, couched 
in simple language, full of practical applications and homely 
illustrations, were now furnished with a philosophic terminology 
and systematized into a complete and consistent statement of 
beliefs. The ceremonies of Christian worship were beautified 
by borrowings from the ritual and usages of Greek religions. The 
extemporaneous and untutored missionary preaching of the 
early Christian converts gave place to the carefully prepared 
and polished utterances of professional preachers. 

Growth of Ecclesiastical Organization 

From Rome the church drew its organization and much of 
its law. We shall trace the development of church organization 


44 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


at this point in some detail, for the Christian church was des¬ 
tined to become the “most permanent and most powerful or¬ 
ganization in history.” First of all, groups of believers formed in 
the various cities in which the first missionaries labored. There 
seems to have been no local clergy at first. Only the apostles 
could impart the gift of the spirit, that is, confirm or ordain. 
Leading members of the local groups who helped to keep the 
church alive between the visits of the apostles were called pres¬ 
byters or deacons. The early Christians believed the world 
was soon to end, and this may have made them a little slow to 
organize. But the world did not come to an end though the 
life of the apostles did. A step in advance was taken in the 
second century when an official was appointed in each city to 
look after the spiritual needs of the flock. This official was known 
as an “overseer” ( episcopos ) or bishop. The ancient unit of 
the civitas or city-state was a powerful factor in the develop¬ 
ment of the office of bishop. All the believers in the civitas 
evidently felt they must form a single community; one God, 
one Christ, and one bishop, their leader, chosen by them. Pres¬ 
byters and deacons continued to assist the bishop in his work 
of spiritual ministration and in relieving distress. In the larger 
cities, as the flock grew more numerous, duties multiplied and 
a whole hierarchy of ecclesiastics appeared. Thus in Rome, 
about 230 a.d., there were 46 presbyters, 7 deacons, 7 sub¬ 
deacons, 42 acolytes, and 52 exorcists, readers, and doorkeepers. 

Along with the development within the various city-states 
went the organization of the whole Christian world. Here, 
again, the doctrine of Christian unity was an early and power¬ 
ful influence—one God, one Christ, one Church. St. Cyprian, 
(c. 200-258), preached this doctrine most effectively. He was 
a wealthy and highly cultivated gentleman who had devoted 
himself, at first, to confounding the Christians. Won over to 
the Christian side, Cyprian poured forth all his wealth and 
his talents in the service of the church, becoming bishop of 
Carthage. He fought hard to hold in check those who were 
seeking to set up rival sects. There is only one Ark, he declared, 
and only those on board it are safe or saved. The compelling 
nature of the doctrine of unity is manifest even now in the 


EARLY HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


45 


tenacity with which the various Protestant sects, the embodi¬ 
ment of Christian disunion, affirm their faith in a “Holy Cath¬ 
olic Church”, invisible and indivisible. The ideal of unity 
reached its fullest expression in the Petrine doctrine. This 
famous doctrine affirmed that St. Peter, chief of the apostles, 
was commissioned by Christ Himself to found the visible church, 
and that in fulfilment of this divine commission he founded 
the church at Rome. St. Peter himself thus became the first 
bishop of Rome or pope and so head of the Christian world. 
Other bishops, notably those of Alexandria and Constantinople, 
contested this claim of the bishop of Rome. Constantinople 
succeeded in making good its independence, as the existence of 
the millions of followers of the Greek Catholic Church now at¬ 
tests. But in the West, as will be seen, Rome had her way and 
so began the papacy. 


The Bible 

Another powerful influence in the formative period of the 
church was the Bible. We have seen how the sacred books of 
the Jews were cherished by the early Christians. These con¬ 
stitute the Old Testament. The New Testament took form 
very slowly. Christ himself wrote nothing nor did any of his 
disciples make a written record of His acts and words at the 
time or for some time after His death. Those who had walked 
and talked with Him, however, had heard and seen that which 
was unforgettable. But as Christ’s contemporaries began to 
pass away, one by one, the need for a permanent record of the 
famous story began to be felt. A series of letters and more or 
less complete biographies were written, in which was recorded 
all that we know of the life of Christ. Not one of these docu¬ 
ments was written earlier than twenty years after the death of 
Jesus, and the Gospel of John was written not earlier than 100 a.d. 
The New Testament as we have it to-day includes twenty-seven 
documents or “books”. The early Christians had many others 
which they reverently cherished and esteemed sacred. One of 
these was the winsome portrayal of Jesus called “The Shep¬ 
herd.” Gradually, however, it was determined that certain 
writings were worthy of official recognition and others were not. 


46 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Theological Controversies 

No survey of decisive factors in the history of the early 
church would be complete without an account of the great 
theological controversies. Theology is man’s attempt to estab¬ 
lish an intellectual foundation for the truths of religion. Con¬ 
troversy in this field has gone on throughout the whole of 
Christian history, though its vogue seems less at present. Theo¬ 
logical champions who are finally defeated are usually known 
as heretics. In the early centuries, when the body of orthodox 
theology was in the making, the contests were especially 
frequent, bitter and important. 

First, there were the battles between Christianity and rival 
religions which were seeking to absorb Christian teachings into 
their systems of belief. Of these the most important were the 
various sects called Gnostics. Of Oriental origin but with many 
elements drawn from Greek philosophy and Christian teaching 
in it, Gnosticism taught that there were two rival principles at 
war in the world, good and evil. These principles were struggling 
for the mastery not only of the world but of each human soul. 
The material world and the physical body were held to be the 
creations of the god of evil. The human soul must therefore 
renounce the world and the flesh. One of the greatest of the 
Gnostics was a Persian teacher called Mani, who lived in the 
third century. He had many followers in the West. Among the 
most famous of these Manicheans was St. Augustine, who later 
turned to Christianity. 

Besides these out and out foes of Christianity there were 
those who emphasized one or another point of the Christian 
faith so strongly and so exclusively as to arrive at only a partial 
acceptance of Christian truth. Foremost among these were the 
Arians, so-called from Arius of Alexandria, their leader (d. 336 
a.d.), who held that there was only one true God, the Father, 
and that the Son and the Holy Ghost were not co-eternal with 
Him but were created beings. This view resembles that of 
the modern Unitarians. The Arians became very numerous 
and influential. They were especially successful as missionaries 
among the German tribes north of the Danube. Three centuries 


EARLY HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 


47 


after the death of Arius the fact that Goths, Vandals, and 
Burgundians were Arian explains much of the difficulties of 
those peoples with the Roman provincials of Gaul, Spain, and 
North Africa among whom they had settled as conquerors. Be¬ 
fore Arius had died, however, a great Council of the church had 
been assembled by the emperor Constantine at Nicsea, as we 
have seen. The Arian controversy had torn the church wide 
open and the emperor was most anxious for a settlement, though 
he was personally indifferent about its form. This Council 
adopted the famous Nicene creed which affirms that the Son is 
consubstantial with the Father and co-eternal. Gibbon defines the 
quality of consubstantiality in language which has the precise¬ 
ness, and the difficulty, of a mathematical formula—it is “pure 
and distinct equality tempered, on the one hand, by the internal 
connexion and spiritual penetration which indissolubly unites the 
Divine Persons, and, on the other by the pre-eminence of the 
Father which was acknowledged as far as is compatible with 
the independence of the Son.” So Arianism was condemned. 

Another debate about the Trinity, which had grave conse¬ 
quences, was the so-called “Filioque” controversy. Did the 
Holy Ghost proceed from the Father and the Son, or from the 
Father through the Son? Here again the question of the full 
equality of the Son with the Father is involved. The latter 
view, finally condemned by the West, continued to be held 
by the whole of the Greek Catholic world. Controversy be¬ 
tween the two churches over this point went on for centuries, 
and was a most important cause of the final split between 
them. Another group of Christians, called Nestorians from their 
leader Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, 428-431 a.d., con¬ 
demned the description of the Virgin Mary as “the mother of 
God.” The bishop held that “a human mother can only bear 
a human being; God was not born; He dwelt in that which was 
born.” This view was condemned by the Council of Ephesus, 
in 431 a.d. There was also a debate about the nature of Christ. 
Had He both a human and a divine nature or had He only one 
nature, and that human? The one-nature or Monophysite 
view was branded as heretical by a general Council of the church 
at Constantinople, in 680 a.d. 


48 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Church Councils 

These examples will suffice to show us the sort of questions 
that were being debated in the early Christian church. Many 
of them still engage the attention of men. Some mention has 
been made of church Councils and it should be said that the 
origin of these great, universal, and representative bodies was 
one of the important results of the period of theological con¬ 
troversies. Beginning with Nicaea in 325 a.d. a series of gen¬ 
eral Councils was held which contributed greatly to the growth 
of the organization of the church and to the defining of its 
doctrines. Other councils in the series were those of Constan¬ 
tinople, in 381, Ephesus, in 431, Chalcedon, 451, and Constan¬ 
tinople, again, in 553. We will not trace the series farther at 
this point, since to do so would carry us beyond the period with 
which this chapter is concerned. 

For Further Reading 

G. B. Adams, Civilization during the Middle Ages, chap. 3 
A. C. McGiffert, The Apostolic Age 

Cambridge Mediaeval History , I, chaps. 2 and 19 

H. 0. Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind, I, chaps. 3, 4, and 5 
F. Cumont, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism 

E. G. Hardy, Christianity and the Roman Government 
L. M. 0. Duchesne, Early History of the Christian Church 
C. B. Coleman, Constantine the Great and Christianity 


CHAPTER FIVE 


THE GERMANS 

Of all the barbarian peoples outside the Roman Empire the 
most important for the history of Europe in the nearer future 
were the Germans. Dwelling along the Rhine-Danube bound¬ 
ary in the north for centuries and gradually filtering through 
into the Empire as slaves, coloni , and soldiers, it was their 
“Great Invasion” of the fifth century a.d. which was the 
prelude to the “fall of Rome.” 

The earliest home of the Germans seems to have been the 
country surrounding the western extremity of the Baltic Sea. 
From this region they gradually spread eastward and south¬ 
ward. By 200 b.c. they were to be found through the whole 
of northern and western Germany and had reached the Rhine 
and the Main, to the south. The evidence for this movement 
is partly archaeological and partly linguistic. 

The Sources of our Knowledge 

It is not easy, and perhaps not even possible, to gain a sat¬ 
isfactory knowledge of the institutions and the characteristics 
of the early Germans. They had no art of writing and so have 
left us no written records. Their laws, based upon customs of 
great antiquity, constitute a very precious source of knowledge; 
but unfortunately these laws were not written down until the 
sixth and seventh centuries a.d., after the Great Invasion. 
Furthermore their laws have come down to us sadly mixed 
with Roman and Christian elements. German literature, an¬ 
other important source, was purely oral and was not reduced 
to writing until the mediaeval period, chiefly between the elev¬ 
enth and thirteenth centuries. As we get it, therefore, early 
Germanic literature is mixed with extraneous elements, not 
always clearly identifiable. The evidence of archaeology is 
relatively unimportant, for the Germans rarely lived in the 

49 




50 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


same place for more than a few years at a time and hence 
were without a material civilization of any importance. How¬ 
ever, archaeology does tell us something of the agricultural 
methods of the early Germans and of the number and variety 
of their domesticated plants and animals. 

For other contemporary evidence we are dependent upon the 
observations of Roman writers who came in contact with the 
Germans from time to time. These accounts vary greatly in 
value since many of them were written by men who had little 
direct acquaintance with the Germans and who were not 
trained observers. By far the best of the Roman accounts are 
those of Caesar and Tacitus. Caesar’s account is the earlier by 
a century and a half, but he gave the Germans comparatively 
little of his attention. What little he says, however, seems 
highly reliable. The Germania of Tacitus remains, therefore, 
by far our best source. Tacitus was probably a good observer, 
though his opportunity for studying the Germans would not 
be considered sufficient to-day. The value of his observations 
is somewhat reduced by the fact that Tacitus wrote his book 
for the purpose of showing the decadent Romans how much 
superior to them were the fresh unspoiled children of the north¬ 
ern forests. But with all these limitations Tacitus’s account has 
immense value. Successive generations of scholars have tortured 
and twisted his text in an effort to extract from it the last drop 
of information. Only the Biblical texts have undergone a more 
careful or more frequent scrutiny. 

Stage of Civilization 

Certain major facts about the early Germans stand out with 
sufficient clearness. At the time of the invasions they were in 
a stage of civilization half-way between the pastoral and the 
agricultural. Their chief wealth was their flocks and herds; 
indeed, their cattle were their currency. Their dwellings con¬ 
sisted of log cabins, each with its little enclosure. These log 
cabins were built in little clusters or villages and the whole 
village was often surrounded by a hedge and a clearing, the 
better to defend it. The villagers raised cereals in the open 
fields surrounding the settlement. By far the greater part of 


THE GERMANS 


51 


the land of the village, however, was pasture or waste or for¬ 
est. Each cabin with its little enclosure was in private owner¬ 
ship, but the cultivated fields were held in a sort of common 
proprietorship. Each year the fields were reapportioned among 
the villagers for cultivation, the principle of division being 
wealth or rank, apparently. The lands allotted to any one vil¬ 
lager did not lie in a single tract but were scattered through 
the great open fields in acre or half-acre strips. A considerable 
degree of cooperation in plowing, sowing, and reaping was thus 
made necessary. The pasture, meadow, wood, and waste were 
enjoyed in common, each head of a family in the village having 
“rights’’ in them in proportion to the number of acres he held 
in the cultivated fields. The Germans still depended upon hunt¬ 
ing for a livelihood, in part, and clothed themselves chiefly in 
the skins of the animals they killed. Their agricultural methods 
were very primitive so that the fields soon lost their fertility. 
This, together with their partial dependence upon hunting, 
made it necessary for the villagers to change their location 
every few years. Much of the land was dense forest or swamp, 
and the early Germans made little effort to clear or drain such 
areas. This greatly limited the total acreage available for 
agriculture or even for pasture. Land-hunger, therefore, was 
chronic among the German tribes. A succession of bad seasons, 
or even a slight increase in population, was sufficient to set a 
tribe in motion, either against more favored but weaker tribes 
or against the Roman Empire. 

Political and Social Institutions 

A German village was made up of a certain number of families, 
rigidly limited, it would seem, by the economic possibilities of 
the place. The German family consisted not only of the father, 
mother, and children but also of the more immediate kinsfolk 
as well. The authority of the father was very great, extending 
theoretically to the power of life and death. Wives, though 
still “sold” to their husbands, were held in high respect. Monog¬ 
amy was strictly observed in general, and divorce was rare. 
In some tribes widows were not allowed to remarry. Women 
were accounted on an equality with men except in the in- 


52 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


heritance of land. The family was a social as well as an economic 
unit and exacted private justice or vengeance on behalf of 
any of its members. Fines payable for the death or injury of 
any member of the family were paid to the family. In the army 
all the members of a family who had the right to bear arms 
fought side by side. Each village was pretty much of a self- 
sufficient economic unit as was, indeed, the family or house¬ 
hold, for that matter. There was, therefore, little or no com¬ 
merce or industry. Roads and bridges were non-existent. Tracks 
and paths and fords, following the lines of least resistance, served 
the purpose of infrequent communication. A village assembly, 
or town-moot, served all local purposes and passed by-laws to 
regulate the cultivation of the common fields, the rights of 
pasture, and the duty of the watch. Offences against these by¬ 
laws were dealt with in the local assembly, and town officers, 
such as a head-man, herdsmen, and by-law men, were elected 
there also. 

A certain number of villages formed a “hundred”. This 
term was used as a measure of territory and may originally 
have included the lands occupied by a hundred families; or it 
may simply have been used in the sense of a large number, as 
we sometimes use the number “sixty ”. The hundred was chiefly 
a judicial unit and an administrative subdivision of the tribe. 
Freemen from all the villages within the hundred assembled in 
and made up the hundred-moot. Above the hundred, and in¬ 
cluding many of them, was the highest unit, the tribe or clan. 
The tribal assembly, made up of all the freemen from the vil¬ 
lages of the tribe, was “sovereign”, deciding such major ques¬ 
tions as war, peace, and migration. Sometimes, and for longer or 
shorter periods, a number of tribes might be united into a loose 
confederation. But these confederations easily dissolved when the 
purpose which was their occasion ceased to be an active one. 

A most important social class among the early Germans was 
the freemen. They were distinguished, first, by their right to 
bear arms. Weapons varied from tribe to tribe but usually in¬ 
cluded the sword or long knife, the javelin, and sometimes the 
axe. For defense the German fighter carried a shield, but he 
rarely wore a helmet. The freemen were practiced in the use 


THE GERMANS 


53 


of their weapons from an early age and they never laid them 
aside, having their arms buried with them. The right to bear 
arms in defense of the tribe could be granted by the tribe alone. 
The tribal assembly would recognize a young warrior as ca¬ 
pable of bearing arms when it saw fit, and he would be forthwith 
invested with shield and javelin by his father or by one of 
his relatives. Henceforth he was a member of the army. He 
was also a member of the tribal assembly, for this body was 
merely the whole of the freemen in arms. They assembled in 
the open, and expressed their approval of propositions by clash¬ 
ing their weapons together and their disapproval by loud shouts. 

The majority of the early Germans were of the class of free¬ 
men, but there were two minorities. One of these was the slaves. 
This class was recruited chiefly from prisoners taken in war with 
other tribes; but it also included fellow-tribesmen who had 
lost their liberty through crime or gambling. Most of the slaves 
were employed as household servants. A few were permitted 
to have dwellings of their own and to pay their masters a rent 
in grain or in cattle. The position of such slaves seems like 
that of the Roman coloni. Slaves might be set at liberty but 
some of the disabilities of their former status remained to the 
third generation. The other minority was the nobles. Nobility 
among the early Germans seems to have been one of prestige 
rather than of birth. The nobles were wealthier; they owned 
more cattle, more slaves, and sometimes had more wives than 
the freemen. Their wergeld (the price of a man’s life) was higher. 
There was also a tendency for the status of noble to become 
hereditary. The number of noble families, according to Tacitus, 
was not great, but it seemed to be increasing. Certainly the 
importance of this class of great landed proprietors increased 
rapidly during and after the period of invasions. 

Finally we come to the German kingship. Some of the tribes 
had developed this institution by the time of Tacitus, while 
others had not. The tribesmen were accustomed to elect a 
leader or leaders in time of war or migration. It is in this way, 
perhaps, that the kingship developed, for the king was the 
acknowledged leader in war. Moreover, the office continued 
to be elective, though usually the choice was confined to the 


54 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


members of a certain family. The king traced his descent from 
the gods, and he shared with the priests the leadership in public 
worship. He was deemed the guardian of the public peace, 
what little there was, and supreme judge. Ambassadors were 
received and sent by him and treaties and alliances made, with 
the assent of the tribe. On the whole, the institution of monarchy 
was but slightly developed. The early Germans not infre¬ 
quently deposed or dismissed their kings. They seem to have 
desired to be as little governed as possible. 

More important than the king in the administration of the 
German tribe were those whom Tacitus calls principes. These 
seem to have been a group of the wealthiest and most out¬ 
standing men of the tribe. The group of principes is not strictly 
coincident with the class of nobles, however, for it would seem 
that though a princeps might be a noble, a noble was not neces¬ 
sarily a princeps. These principes assumed the position of 
leadership in the tribe. They prepared propositions to be 
voted on by the tribal assembly, leaving to that body the 
simple choice of “yes ” or “no.” One or more of them were 
assigned by the tribe to administer justice in the hundreds. 
In war they commanded the various groups in the army. 
Each princeps had a comitatus or following of young warriors 
who lived at their patron’s house and ate at his table. These 
youths were chosen for their deeds of valor, or for their birth. 
They served under their patron in war and accounted it an 
unendurable shame to leave the field before their leader or to 
survive him in battle. In the words of Tacitus, “On the field 
of battle it was shameful for the prince to be outdone in courage, 
shameful for the band of companions to be unequal in courage 
to their prince. But one shame which could never be effaced 
was to survive him and return alone from the combat.” The 
relationship between patron and client was one of honor and 
privilege and was entirely voluntary. Some see in the comitatus 
an element of the later feudalism. 

Germanic Law 

These early Germans seem to have had to an unusual de¬ 
gree the qualities of sturdy individualism and self-confidence. 


THE GERMANS 


55 


These qualities may be seen in their law and in their literature. 
Their law consisted of the customs of the people, carried in 
their memories. This is in direct contrast with the Roman idea 
that “ the will of the prince is law.” To a large extent the 
customs of the Germans were based upon the principle of self- 
help, or private vengeance. It was considered that the individual 
or his family had the right to defend his person, his liberty, and 
his property. Most offences could be compounded for a fine, 
which varied both according to the gravity of the injury or 
damage and according to the wergeld of the injured individual. 
If the parties preferred, they could take their quarrel before 
the public assembly. The hundred-moot was the usual place. 
The principes and the freemen of the assembly would say what 
the good customs of the folk were and would act as arbitrators 
between the two adversaries. 

Proof was by oath, and the unsupported oath of a freeman 
would clear him in many cases. If support were deemed neces¬ 
sary recourse was had to the oaths of a certain number of other 
freemen, who swore not to what they believed to be the facts 
in the case but that they believed the oath in question was 
valid. Such men were called “oath-helpers” or compurgators. 
Or, the good faith of the oath-taker might be attested, if the 
assembly so desired, by various tests or ordeals. In this way 
the issue was put up to God for decision. The ordeal of combat 
between accuser and accused or their respective champions 
was a very common test. The ordeal of the hot iron was another. 
In this the accused carried a hot iron a certain number of paces 
and then dropped it. His hand was then sealed up for a certain 
number of days. The question was, would the burn heal cleanly, 
without festering? Another test was to have the accused eat 
a consecrated wafer without choking; this came in after the 
Germans were Christianized, of course. In general, ordeals were 
based upon a sound psychological principle, namely, that the 
morale of a guilty person would break down. In an age that 
believed that God would reveal the truth in an ordeal the col¬ 
lapse of a guilty person was almost inevitable. The ordeals 
can be laughed out of court, then, only by men who have ceased 
to believe in them. Finally, it should be observed that the 


56 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


guilty person, in addition to compounding with the injured 
person or his family, had to pay a small fine to the state as 
“peace money” for having broken the public peace. One who 
had forfeited his right to protection by the public peace, by 
refusing to pay his fine or in any other way, might be declared 
an “outlaw” by the tribal assembly. As such he might be killed 
by any one, freely. Thus we see the beginning of the growth of 
the modern idea of crime as an injury to the state. 

Germanic Literature 

Illustrations of German self-confidence and pride are met 
with everywhere in their literature. As has been remarked, Ger¬ 
man literature at the time of the invasions was entirely oral, 
so that we are dependent for our knowledge of it on the written 
versions of a much later date. One of the first of the German 
epics to be written down was the Hildebrandslied, which dates 
from the end of the eighth century. This is an especially im¬ 
portant bit of Germanic literature since it is still, as we have 
it, “an epic of untouched German heathenism.” The Norse 
•sagas, though of a much later date, are likewise purely Teutonic, 
uninfluenced either by Christianity or by classical culture. 
These sagas are the highest expression of the Teutonic genius 
in literature. In the Nibelungenlied, contemporary with the 
sagas, we find much evidence of Christian influence. 

The qualities of character which this Germanic literature 
reveals are elemental. The Germans are depicted as hard fight¬ 
ers, good haters, and exceedingly greedy, but with plenty of 
physical and even moral courage. They show fine tenacity 
of purpose, also, and a disposition to face facts with hard 
rationality. The story is told of an adventuresome Gothic 
herdboy, about the beginning of the third century a.d., who 
wandered into a Roman camp and into the presence of the 
emperor himself. He remained entirely self-possessed and en¬ 
tered upon a wrestling match with one of the emperor s body¬ 
guards and later tried to outrun the emperor s horse. The sol¬ 
diers took a fancy to the boy. He entered their ranks and in 
due time became emperor of Rome (Maximius). Indications 
of national feeling are found in the prologue of the Salic law, 


THE GERMANS 


57 


which reads in part as follows: “The glorious people of the 
Franks, whose founder is God Himself, brave in arms, firm in 
peace, wise in counsel, noble in body, radiant in health, in 
beauty, and daring, quick, ardent . . . this is the people who 
shook the cruel yoke of the Roman from its neck.” 

A quality which impressed the Romans most strongly was the 
great size and prowess of the Germans; there was supposed to 
be a special furor teuton icus. In the Nibelungenlied this Teutonic 
fury is much in evidence. Axes rattle on the heads of the war¬ 
riors and the heroine ardently sought by the hero refuses him 
because he has not as yet killed enough people. In the Saga 
of Walthari the adventuresome youth, whose father was a 
Yisigothic king of Acquitaine, was beset by King Gunther 
of Worms and twelve of his thanes. Walthari had killed eleven 
of them, one after another, when night fell. Early next morn¬ 
ing Gunther and his remaining thane, Hagen, rode forward to 
the attack. Walthari rushed at Gunther and hewed off his 
leg at the hip with tremendous blows. Hagen chopped off 
Walthari’s right hand. Whereupon Walthari slipped the stump 
of his arm through the strap of his shield and fought on with 
his left and, launching his attack, knocked out Hagen’s right 
eye and six of his teeth, slashing his face. The three of them 
seemed to have had enough by this time so they sat down on 
the grass to talk it over in friendly fashion, bantering each other 
about the mutilations they had inflicted. 

The Religion of the Early Germans 

The religion of the early Germans was very like that of 
other primitive peoples, being largely a deification of the forces 
of nature. It had elements of heroism and intrepid daring in 
it that are not without their appeal to-day. “The worship of 
Odin and Thor was preeminently a warrior’s religion, a reli¬ 
gion of high-hearted gentlemen not over-burdened with brains 
or troubled about their own souls.” (Trevelyan.) Heroes who 
fell in battle were admitted to the skies, the Valhalla (Wahl- 
halle), where dwelt the Valkyries, and were there received and 
given drink by Frigga, wife of Wodin. The principal god of the 
Germans was Wodin or Odin, whose name survives in our 


58 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


“Wednesday”. Wodin was the god of the sun, journeying 
through the sky wrapped in a blue mantle, armed with a sword 
and lance and seated on a magnificent steed with a golden mane. 
He was the symbol of combat and of victory, the patron of 
poetry and eloquence. Another god was Thor or Donar, god 
of thunder (“ Thursday ”). His beard was red like the light¬ 
ning and all animals with red fur, like the fox and the squirrel, 
were sacred to him. He was the patron of agriculture, of mar¬ 
riage, and of the creative forces generally. Unlike all the other 
gods and goddesses, Thor walked. On the whole the religion 
of these early Germans was not highly organized. Their priests 
helped to maintain discipline in the army and order in the 
assembly; they led in the public worship, and forecast events 
by examining the flight of birds and attending to the neighing 
of the sacred horses. But the position of the priests in German 
society was not deeply entrenched. Of temples the Germans 
had none at all. In the face of Christianity, a highly organized 
religion with a trained priesthood and a vast body of theology 
full of precise doctrines, the primitive nature-worship of the 
Germans could make no effective opposition. The Germans 
surrendered to Christianity almost en masse. 

For Further Reading 

The Germania of Tacitus (Numerous translations) 

J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 
chap. 3 

G. B. Adams, Civilization during the Middle Ages, chap. 5 
Cambridge Mediaeval History, I, chap. 7 

W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, I, chap. 2 

H. 0. Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind, I, chap. 8 
F. B. Gummere, Germanic Origins 

Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 9 


CHAPTER SIX 


THE INVASIONS 

The more we know about human history the less abrupt, 
the more gradual, all its major movements seem. The invasion 
of the German peoples in the fifth century of our era was no 
sudden upheaval of the northern sea in a tidal wave of inunda¬ 
tion, bringing destruction and death to the Roman Empire. 
It was, rather, the last act in a slowly unfolding historical drama, 
the theme of which was the fusion of the Germanic and Roman 
peoples. The invasions were the culminating movement in this 
process of fusion, a process that lasted nearly a thousand years. 

Germans in the Empire before the Invasions 

The German peoples were constantly in movement, as we 
have seen; the nature of their economy made this inevitable. 
For centuries they had pressed upon the Roman frontier and 
for centuries Rome had stood to her defenses. Occasionally 
the dikes were breached and the flood poured through. Such 
was the invasion of the Cimbri in the second century b.c., or, 
again, of the Suevi under Ariovistus in the time of Julius Caesar. 
Caesar’s nephew and successor, Augustus, began to fortify the 
weakest point in the northern frontier, namely, the region 
where the Rhine and Danube valleys join. The defenses of 
Augustus were extended by later emperors and stood complete 
under Hadrian. A line of entrenchment extended from the 
Rhine, where the Lippe joins it, eastward to the confluence of 
the Altmiihl with the Danube. A garrison of 80,000 soldiers 
was encamped upon this line of entrenchment. Roman civiliza¬ 
tion quickly permeated the whole area behind the new fron¬ 
tier during the next two centuries and even began to spread 
beyond. It is conceivable that all Germania might have been 
Romanized in time had not the Great Invasion of the fifth 
century swept the barrier away. 


60 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


For some centuries, then, Roman defense stood firm. Dur¬ 
ing those centuries the process of fusion between German and 
Roman was constantly going on. Thousands of Germans en¬ 
tered the Roman Empire as household slaves, to learn something 
of Roman ways of life and to mingle their blood with the blood 
of their masters. Other thousands entered the army. The Ger¬ 
mans loved fighting and they made splendid soldiers. Con¬ 
stantine s army, with which he waged his campaign for the 
imperial crown, consisted mainly of German troops. The Rhine- 
Danube army came to be almost wholly a German army. Many 
of the German soldiers became officers in the imperial armies, 
some of high rank. A German, Argobastes, was commander- 
in-chief under Valentinian II. Stilicho, whom we shall see 
at the head of a Roman army disputing the entrance of the 
West Goths into Italy, was a German. Other thousands of 
Germans were settled on the land as coloni. We have seen that 
agriculture was declining in the later Roman Empire through 
the desertion of the land by the peasants, who flocked to the 
cities. Several emperors sought to re-stock the soil, especially 
in Italy, by importing Germans. These new coloni were not 
allowed to leave the land, so they lived in a form of enslave¬ 
ment. In still another way Germans entered the Empire, that 
is, by peaceful migration. Whole tribes, men, women, and chil¬ 
dren, with their slaves and cattle, were sometimes allowed to 
cross the border and settle in vacant lands as “allies” of Rome. 
One of the obligations of these allies was to guard the section 
of the frontier contiguous to them. The coming of many tribes 
of Germans in swift succession without Rome’s consent, to 
set up German kingdoms on Roman soil, was, then, but an 
extension of the process of “peaceful penetration” that had 
been going on for centuries. 

To this migration on a grand scale, the Great Invasion of 
the fifth century, we may now turn. In our western world man 
has long ceased to be migratory in the sense in which these 
Germanic peoples were, and it is difficult for us to form a men¬ 
tal picture of such a movement. It will help if we call to mind 
the movements of a herd of buffalo or the flight of wild geese. 
It was a massive and formless movement. There was no pre- 


THE INVASIONS 


61 


arrangement, no common understanding among the Germans. 
Much of the movement resulted from mere contagion of motion. 
Modern movements of people, in emigration or colonization, 
are attenuated forms of the older migrations or invasions. 

Land-Hunger a Motive of the Invaders 

The impelling motive of the invaders was to find land to 
live on. It is known that population was increasing very rapidly 
during the generation just before the movement. We are told 
by the historian of the Lombards, Paul the Deacon, that the 
Lombards divided themselves into three groups, because of the 
increase of population, and cast lots to see which group should 
migrate. The prospect of plunder which the weakly defended 
cities of the southland offered, while not without its appeal, 
was a distinctly minor matter. Land to live on, a Heimland, as 
Alaric put it to the Roman authorities in 408, was what the in¬ 
vaders sought. Much of the land inhabited by the Germans 
was sunken in swamps or covered with dense forests and hence 
was not easily available for agriculture. The fertile valleys and 
well tilled fields of Rome’s northern provinces must have had 
a strong attraction for the Germans across the border. Once 
the southward movement had begun it was inevitable that it 
would go forward rapidly, for the sunny southland of Europe 
has always had a fascination for northerners with their experi¬ 
ence of longer nights, darker days, and a severe climate. Then, 
too, we should remember that the Germans were being pressed 
upon by other peoples. The Slavs were pushing steadily west¬ 
ward year by year, crowding the Germans closer together. And 
we shall see that the eastern Germans were finally impelled to 
cross over on to Roman soil by the sudden onslaught of a horde 
of nomads out of Asia. Moreover, it is clear that there was much 
vacant land in the Empire. Northeastern France, Belgium, and 
the lower valley of the Rhine were empty land in the fifth cen¬ 
tury. This is proved by the number of “finds” of coins in 
these regions, showing that the inhabitants had moved out 
when the frontier seemed about to be broken through, hoping to 
return later and recover their buried treasure when the danger 
was over. That these lands were empty is indicated, also, by 


62 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the absence of any written accounts of the expansion of the 
Frankish tribes in this region; there was no Roman eye-witness. 
News of vacant lands, then, attracted the Germans nearest the 
frontier, and from them the contagion spread and the original 
stir widened into a general movement. “ Nature herself seemed 
to have created the vacuum into which she in time inevitably 
attracted the Germans.’’ 

Western and Eastern Groups 

We may divide the invading German peoples into two groups, 
an eastern and a western. The western group included Ale- 
manni, Suevi, Burgundians, Bavarians, Angles, Saxons, Franks, 
and others. The eastern group included Vandals, Lombards, 
and, most numerous of all, the Goths. This group was settled 
along the Danube river for the most part. During the later cen¬ 
turies of the Empire the greatest pressure on the German frontier 
had been in the West. The Alemanni broke through the line be¬ 
tween the Main and the Danube about 250 a.d., and crossing 
the Alps into Italy reached Ravenna. This was a foretaste of 
what was to follow. The Franks crossed the lower Rhine about 
the same time. Fighting was continuous along the western front 
from this time until the fall of Rome and the line was re¬ 
peatedly broken and repaired. Rome held on in the West, but 
with a weakening resistance. The first big break, however, 
the prelude to collapse all along the line, came in the East. 

The Goths on the Roman Frontier 

The Goths moved to the lower Danube and the northern 
shore of the Black Sea about 250 b.c. Gradually two divisions 
appeared among them, the Visigoths, north of the lower Danube, 
and the Ostrogoths, north of the Black Sea. The meaning of 
these terms is not entirely clear, but they were interpreted by 
the Romans to mean West and East. In these vast regions 
the Goths remained for six centuries. The great wheat lands 
of Roumania and the Ukraine are there, and it might well be 
that a great German empire would have been established there 
had conditions remained favorable. In the course of time, as the 
defenses of Rome in this part of the frontier weakened, the 


THE INVASIONS 


63 


Goths began to make plundering raids across the border. One 
such raid, about 250 a.d., shook the Empire to its foundations. 
Led by their king, Kniwa, the West Goths crossed the Danube 
into Thrace, laid seige to Philipopolis, and defeated the em¬ 
peror Decius and his son. The invaders were bought off, finally, 
by the promise of a yearly subsidy. It was about this same 
year, it will be remembered, that the Alemanni and the Franks 
broke through in the West. Yet Rome survived these shocks 
and lived on for more than two hundred years! The success¬ 
ful foray of the West Goths in 250 a.d. was followed by others. 
Twenty years later, taking to the water, the Goths pushed 
through the Bosporus past Constantinople and raided the 
shores of Attica and Laconia. Other raids were directed against 
the coasts of Asia Minor and the islands of the iEgean, as far 
south as Crete and Cyprus. In the meantime the East Goths 
were pushing northward and eastward from the Black Sea to 
the headwaters of the Dnieper and the Volga. 

Meanwhile some elements of Roman civilization were filter¬ 
ing through to the Goths. Roman traders began to circulate 
among them and Roman prisoners, brought back from Gothic 
raids, taught their masters many things. In these ways the 
Goths first learned of Christianity and some of them became 
converts as early as 250 a.d. The great missionary to the 
Goths, however, the man who almost single-handed accom¬ 
plished their conversion, was Ulfilas. He was born among them, 
of mixed Greek and Gothic blood, about 310 a.d. He was con¬ 
secrated bishop of the Goths at the age of 30 by Eusebius, the 
famous Arian bishop of Constantinople. Ulfilas had great 
talents as an organizer as well as the special gifts of an evan¬ 
gelist. After seven years of labor among the Goths he was 
obliged to flee across the Danube into Roman territory, near 
Nicopolis, where he lived and worked more than thirty years 
longer, directing the missionary movement from this safe re¬ 
treat. To forward the work of converting the Goths Ulfilas 
translated the New Testament and parts of the Old Testament 
into the Gothic tongue. He was careful to omit the more war¬ 
like portions of the Scriptures, having come to the conclusion, 
probably from personal observation and experience, that the 


64 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


warlike ardor of the Goths needed no stimulation. Ulfilas s 
Bible in Gothic is a most precious document to modern stu¬ 
dents of philology, since it is the sole example of the primitive 
Teutonic languages that we possess. The conversion of the 
whole Gothic nation soon followed. It will be noted, however, 
that the Goths became converts to the Arian faith. The Roman 
provincials of the West, among whom the Goths later settled, 
were of the Orthodox faith and regarded the Goths as heretics. 
The religious controversy which ensued was, as we shall see, a 
serious hindrance to the fusion of the two peoples. 

The West Goths Cross the Danube 

All prospects that a great German state might be founded 
in the favoring lands where the Goths had settled disappeared 
when, about the year 370 a.d., a great horde of nomads came 
pouring through the Caspian gap into Europe. Indeed, the 
impact of the Huns, as these nomads were called, upon the 
Goths was the beginning of the series of events which culmi¬ 
nated, a century later, in the fall of Rome. No European people 
could withstand these formidable fighters. The rapidity of 
movement of the Huns, superbly mounted as they were, was in 
itself terrifying, and their gashed cheeks and brutal customs 
added terror to their approach. The Ostrogoths surrendered to 
the Huns en masse , though their aged king, Hermanric, killed 
himself rather than survive disaster. On payment of an annual 
tribute of money and soldiers the Ostrogoths were allowed to 
keep their lands. The West Goths endeavored to check the 
headlong rush of the Huns, first at the Dniester river and then 
at the Pruth, but failing completely most of them fled in terror. 
The Gothic king, Athanarich, retired with some followers into 
the mountains of Transylvania. The majority of the West 
Goths, however, gathered on the north bank of the Danube, 
where they sought permission to cross over to safety in Roman 
territory. Permission was granted and on rafts and in boats 
made of hollowed-out tree trunks, in the year 376 a.d., the 
fugitives made their way across the river. They soon covered 
the countryside round about “like ashes from an eruption of 
Mt. iEtna.” 



THE INVASIONS 


65 


Any attempts to estimate the number of the West Goths 
who thus settled on Roman soil can be at best but expert 
guesses. One recent authority, Boissonade, sets the number 
at 200,000, men, women, and children. Another, Thompson, 
says there can have been no more than 150,000. In either case 
the number was not formidable; Rome had often digested a 
meal like this. Who could have foreseen that the West Goths 
were destined to make their way through the very center of 
the Roman Empire from east to west, sacking the Eternal 
City as they went? Yet this is what occurred. As Sherman’s 
“March to the Sea” led to the collapse of the Confederacy, 
so was the march of the West Goths the prelude to the fall 
of Rome. However, we must not press this parallel too far. 
The Goths entered the Empire as friends, and were settled 
along the Danube as “allies” by the emperor Valens. The 
emperor had to promise them food, for the Goths had been 
able to bring little with them. Eventually, no doubt, enough 
land could have been allotted to them so that they could have 
become self-supporting. In the meantime, however, the Goths 
were dependent upon Rome’s bounty for their very subsistence. 
The emperor’s officials proved to be shameless profiteers. Faced 
with starvation the Goths revolted, or perhaps “mutinied” 
would be a better word, since they considered themselves, and 
were so considered, a part of the Roman army. The emperor 
Valens in person hurried out at the head of his troops to meet 
this new peril. In the battle of Adrianople, in 378 a.d., the 
emperor and two-thirds of his army were slain. It was a second 
Cannae. Rome was famous for her recuperative powers; but 
from this blow there could be no recovery. 

Masters of the situation as they now were the Goths made 
no immediate move. They lived quietly in the lands that had 
been allotted to them, or which they had seized. Their new 
king, successor to the fugitive Athanarich, was Alaric. He and 
his Gothic warriors still deemed themselves part of the Roman 
army and the new emperor bestowed upon Alaric the title of 
Magister Utriusque Militix. Like other army officers before 
him Alaric dabbled in imperial politics, and when he could not 
get the concessions he wanted from one emperor he endeavored 


66 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


to set up a rival emperor who would be more pliable. At length, 
in 395 a.d., the Goths were in motion. Counting from the 
battle of Adrianople it was just forty years before the Goths 
ceased their wanderings. What were they seeking? Had their 
leader Alaric any conscious plan? We cannot tell. That there 
was a weak but definite national consciousness among them 
we may feel sure. It is perhaps safe to assume that they were 
looking for a satisfactory homeland. There is a little, though 
a very little, documentary support for this. When, in the year 
408, the Goths had reached the eastern shores of the Adriatic, 
Alaric, we are informed, demanded the provinces of Noricum, 
Istria, Venetia, and Dalmatia as a Heimland for his people. 
And when the Goths finally settled in Gaul and Spain the chron¬ 
icler Jordanes says they had reached, at last, the “good lands” 
(meliores terras). Is it too fanciful to compare the wanderings of 
the Goths through forty years with the forty years of wander¬ 
ings of the Israelites in search of a homeland? Like Moses, 
Alaric failed to enter the Promised Land. 

Wanderings of the West Goths 

It will be well to follow the wanderings of the West Goths in 
some detail. We can only speculate about the incident which 
set them in motion but whatever it was, they set forth on their 
long journey about the year 395. The emperor in the East at 
this time was Arcadius, and in the West, Honorius, both sons 
of Theodosius II. The defenses of Constantinople were too 
formidable for the Goths, so they turned aside to capture in 
turn Athens and Corinth, and thence to enter the Peloponnesus. 
Returning from that peninsula the Goths then made their 
way to the northwest to enter the province of Illyria. If it was 
a “homeland” they were seeking the Goths had thus far been 
disappointed in their search, apparently. Nor had they, thus 
far, met any resistance worthy of the name. As they reached 
Illyria, however, they were entering the western half of the 
Empire, and the resistance suddenly stiffened. The commander- 
in-chief of the imperial troops in the West was a general of great 
ability, political as well as military. His name was Stilicho, 
a German of Vandal descent. Stilicho met the Goths in Illyria 


THE INVASIONS 


67 


and decisively defeated them at the battle of Pollentia in 403 
a.d. The terms of peace which Stilicho offered Alaric after 
the battle seem to have been fair and even generous. The West 
Goths were to settle in the province of Illyria, of which province 
Alaric was to be prefect, and Alaric was to have a “bonus” of 
four thousand pounds of gold for signing the agreement. 

This great Roman victory at Pollentia, incidentally, was 
the occasion of a triumphal procession in Rome, the last of 
the many triumphs at the capital. It had been exactly one 
hundred years since Rome had seen a triumph,—that of Diocle¬ 
tian in 303 a.d. It must have been a melancholy reflection 
on the part of some of the Roman citizens who crowded upon 
the house tops of the Capitoline and Palatine hills and packed 
the valley between that, unlike previous triumphs, this one of 
Honorius and Stilicho celebrated a deliverance and not a con¬ 
quest. For the first time in a triumphal procession in Rome, 
moreover, Christian bishops led the march, not pagan priests. 

But the emperor and his famous general were given little 
time for enjoyment or reflection. News came of the invasion 
of the north of Italy by a fresh horde of barbarians of mixed 
nationalities. The Roman leaders hurried northward and Stil¬ 
icho routed the invaders in a battle near Florence. 

In the meantime a Roman nationalist reaction had set in in 
Italy. It seemed to the old-fashioned Romans that all the 
highest offices in the army and in the civil service as well were 
being handed over to men of alien birth. Stilicho himself was 
perhaps the most conspicuous example of the preferment of 
aliens in positions of honor and trust in the Empire. For twenty- 
three years he had been commander-in-chief of the Roman 
army in Italy. One of his daughters had married the emperor 
Honorious. Religious bigotry lent bitterness to the hatred of 
the Roman aristocracy for Stilicho. As Catholics the Chris¬ 
tians among them detested Stilicho as an Arian; while the 
pagan remnant had sworn vengeance upon the barbarian 
general as the destroyer of the Sibylline Books. The reaction¬ 
ary Roman nationalists won over the emperor himself to a 
conspiracy and Stilicho was summoned to Ravenna. The gen¬ 
eral knew of his danger and could have put himself at the 


68 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


head of his German troops and refused the summons. This 
he seems to have declined to do for fear of provoking civil war in 
the Empire. On his reaching Ravenna he was assassinated. 
His assassination was followed by an imperial decree providing 
that all barbarians in Italy suspected of conspiracy with Stilicho 
be massacred, and that all civil and military offices be given 
thenceforth exclusively to Romans. Still following the lead of 
the Roman reactionaries, the emperor next took a step fraught 
with the direst consequences. He repudiated the treaty which 
Stilicho had arranged with Alaric. 

The leader of the West Goths promptly set his followers 
in motion and crossed the Julian Alps into Italy. The emperor 
shut himself up in Ravenna, the northern stronghold of Italy, 
and the Goths, prudently declining this invitation to a siege, 
pressed southward. As they approached Rome envoys from 
the Senate came out to meet them, seeking terms. The popula¬ 
tion was large, they said, and determined on defense. The re¬ 
ply which Alaric is supposed to have made is famous—“So 
much the better. The thicker the hay, the easier it is mowed.” 
The Goths succeeded in making their way into Rome through 
the Porta Salaria, by treachery, perhaps, and put the city to 
a three-day sack. As was to be expected, the victorious Goths 
did not content themselves with pillage. They set fire to a good 
many private dwellings and public buildings just for the pleasure 
of seeing them burn, apparently; nor did all the inhabitants es¬ 
cape torture, violation, or even murder. Thus in 410 a.d., after 
a thousand years as a center of conquering and civilizing life, 
the Eternal City had fallen a prey to barbarians. 

Leaving Rome, the Goths moved southward. We may guess 
that Alaric had in mind the wheat lands of Sicily or northern 
Africa as a permanent home for his followers. He had sought 
for such a home for many years, now, in Macedonia, in Achaia, 
in Noricum, and in Italy. Nowhere had conditions been favor¬ 
able; if they had seemed so for the moment, the hope had van¬ 
ished. In Africa Alaric thought, perhaps, that no one could 
follow to dislodge him and his people. He began to assemble 
a fleet at Reggio. A storm scattered it. Suddenly the barbarian 
chieftain fell ill and died (410 a.d.). His followers turned 


THE INVASIONS 


69 


aside the current of a small river, the Busento, and interred 
their leader in its bed so that the Romans might not find and 
desecrate his tomb. “He who had traversed the world with 
the violence and tumult of a torrent now heard forever over¬ 
head the roar of the unleashed waters of the Apeninnes.” 

Final Settlement of the West Goths 

Alaric’s son-in-law and successor, Athaulf, seems to have 
been a leader of a different temper. He was completely sub¬ 
servient to the Roman officials. The fact that he had married 
the emperor’s daughter, the famous Galla Placidia whom Alaric 
had seized as a hostage when he entered Rome, doubtless in¬ 
fluenced Athaulf’s policy. A contemporary writer, who had 
it at second-hand, however, quoted Athaulf as follows: “Once 
I sought eagerly to efface even the name of Roman and to 
transform the Roman Empire into a Gothic empire. . . . But 
a long experience has taught me that the unbridled barbarism 
of the Goths is not compatible with law. Without law there 
can be no State. I have therefore decided to play the part of 
restorer of the Roman name in its integrity by Gothic strength. 
I hope to be known to posterity as the restorer of Rome, since 
I cannot supplant her.” Whether or not these words accurately 
convey Athaulf’s thoughts, he came to terms with Rome and 
was assigned lands for his people on both sides of the Pyrenees, 
in Gaul and Spain. This was in 418, forty years after the battle 
of Adrianople. The policy of close cooperation with Rome begun 
by Athaulf continued for at least half a century under his suc¬ 
cessors. The West Gothic kingdom gradually extended its 
boundaries, reaching its greatest extent under king Euric (466- 
488). Under this king the West Gothic domains covered the 
whole of Gaul south of the Loire and west of the Rhone, to¬ 
gether with most of Spain. 

Other Germans Settle in the Empire 

Meanwhile the Germans in the West had not been inactive, 
though we shall follow their fortunes in less detail. About 350 
a.d. many German tribes crossed the Rhine. The Franks 
moved into Brabant and the Alemanni reached central Gaul. 


70 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


The whole valley of the Rhine was lost to Rome and forty 
cities were laid waste. A Roman general, Julian the Goth, re¬ 
gained the lost territory in a three-year campaign and for a 
moment at least reestablished the Rhine frontier, thus showing 
what a capable leader could do even in the days of Rome’s de¬ 
cadence. But this was Rome’s last success in the West. When 
the great breach came in the East along the Danube troops 
were withdrawn from the West and the Germans crossed over. 
Vandals and Suevi moved through Gaul into Spain. With 
the advance of the West Goths into Spain the Suevi withdrew 
into the mountains to the northwest. The Vandals then crossed 
into Africa. In ten years’ time, 420-439, they overran the en¬ 
tire Roman province of Africa and captured Carthage. The 
date of their taking Carthage, the 19th of October, 439, was 
taken by the Vandals as their New Year’s Day, the point of 
departure in a new calendar of their devising. Another German 
people, the Burgundians, entered Gaul in 411 a.d. They asked 
for and were allowed to assume the role of allies of Rome, and 
were granted lands in the Rhone valley from Lake Geneva nearly 
to the mouth of the river. 

Farther north and west the Franks began their expansion. 
The term “Frank” is a generic one, including many tribes. 
One group of tribes is known as the Salian Franks. This group 
was in the lower Rhine valley nearest the sea—in Zealand, 
Holland, and Dutch Brabant. One of their early kings, per¬ 
haps mythical, was named Merovech (“son of the sea”), whence 
the Merovingian dynasty of Frankish kings gets its name. The 
capital of the Salian Franks was at Tournai on the Scheldt. 
King Childeric, the first ruler of whom we have positive knowl¬ 
edge, died in 481 a.d. and was buried in Tournai where his 
tomb, previously unknown, was discovered in 1653. The Salian 
Franks spread slowly southward into Flanders. This region of 
Roman territory had apparently been deserted by its former 
inhabitants and the Franks moved into empty land. The Latin 
tongue formerly spoken there disappeared and Flemish is 
spoken there to-day. 

Another group of Frankish tribes is known at the Ripuarian 
Franks. They dwelt on the banks of the Rhine farther upstream. 


THE INVASIONS 


71 


They spread slowly southward at about the same time as their 
kinsmen the Salian Franks. In the region that the Ripuarians 
came to occupy permanently, the country around the modern 
cities of Aachen and Bonn, the Latin language and the Chris¬ 
tian religion disappeared. The new southern boundary of the 
Salian and Ripuarian Franks about the year 500 a.d. can 
be seen to-day in the linguistic boundary between the peoples 
of French and German speech. 

From the lower Rhine it is natural to glance toward the Ro¬ 
man province of Britain. The last Roman troops were with¬ 
drawn from the island about 410 a.d., apparently. We can 
learn practically nothing of when German tribes entered the 
island or under what conditions. The first authority we have 
is Gildas, a Romanized monk of Welsh descent, who wrote in 
540 a.d., a full century after the events which he professed 
to narrate. We may be fairly certain of a few major facts, 
however. Like the Salian Franks in Flanders and the Ripuarian 
Franks to the south along the Rhine, the Angles and Saxons 
who entered Britain seem to have exterminated Roman civiliza¬ 
tion. Probably the colonization of Britain was the most thorough 
of all German colonizing efforts. If we are to believe Gildas, the 
Angles and Saxons displayed savage destructiveness. “The in¬ 
habitants are slaughtered, priests and people alike. Of a mis¬ 
erable remnant, some flee to the hills, only to be captured and 
slain in heaps. Some, constrained by famine, come in and 
surrender themselves to be slaves. Others, wailing bitterly, 
pass over seas.” It is interesting to note, incidentally, that 
the Celtic element in modern Brittany was greatly strength¬ 
ened by colonization from the Celtic element of Roman Britain 
during this period. A glance at the map will reveal that terror- 
stricken fugitives from Britain would find in Brittany their 
nearest haven. The fact that the impress of Rome, indelible 
elsewhere, was erased by the German invaders of Roman Brit¬ 
ain is the most important fact in the early history of England. 
“From the Romans who once ruled Britain”, says Haverfield, 
the great English authority, “we Britons have inherited prac¬ 
tically nothing.” 

By the middle of the fifth century, then, Roman power in 


72 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the West was almost destroyed. Northern Africa, Spain, and 
Britain were wholly lost. A Roman official, iEtius, still main¬ 
tained the imperial authority in central Gaul, but the Franks 
in the north and the Goths and Burgundians in the south and 
east held the rest. These peoples may have called themselves 
allies of Rome and accepted Rome’s pay but they had set up 
what were, in fact, independent kingdoms. 

Invasion of the Huns 

Roman authority in the West was thus limited to central 
Gaul and Italy. The next fifty years saw the loss of those 
areas also. First came an invasion of the Huns, as extensive 
in its course and more savage in its destructiveness than that of 
the West Goths. It will be remembered that the Huns, a 
Mongolian people, had poured through the Caspian gap into 
Europe seventy-five years earlier. The shock of their impact 
had overthrown the Gothic empire and started the West Goths 
on their long journey. The Huns had then settled along the 
Danube and Rome took them into her pay, though the Huns 
considered the annual payments to be a forced tribute. In 
450 a.d. this “tribute” ceased. A brave soldier, Marcian, 
had become emperor in Constantinople and he determined that 
the payments should stop. 

The leader of the Huns at this time was Attila. He had fought 
in the armies of Rome as a youth and, returning to his own 
people, had grasped the leadership by cunning and crime. The 
sudden stoppage of the tribute money in the East led Attila 
to consider the opportunities in the West, apparently. The 
chaotic condition there would seem, indeed, to offer much to 
a bold and imaginative leader. Collecting his troops on the edge 
of the Black Forest, in Germany, Attila crossed the Rhine on 
a bridge of boats in 451 a.d. Entering Gaul he turned south¬ 
ward and marched on Orleans, the key to the south of France. 
Here was a menace such as the West had never before had to 
face. A nomad horde, utterly uncivilized, in a stage of culture 
much lower than that of any of the Germanic invaders, the 
Huns were the “scourge of God”, potentially the destroyers of 
civilization. iEtius, the Roman governor in central Gaul, ap- 


THE INVASIONS 


73 


pealed to all the Germans established in Gaul—Franks, Bur¬ 
gundians, and Goths—to unite with him against the common 
enemy. The response was general and generous. Orleans was 
relieved and a tremendous battle ensued at Chalons, near Troyes. 
It was “a battle obstinate, furious, horrible, such as was never 
seen in the memory of man/’ writes the chronicler Jordanes; 
“a little stream flowing through the middle of the plain was 
so swollen by the blood shed that it became a roaring torrent.” 
The victory of the combined Roman and German armies over 
the uncivilized Huns may be taken, not too fancifully, as a 
symbol of the future history of Europe. 

From the battlefield of Chalons the beaten nomads made 
their way back through northern Italy. There Attila met 
no such opposition as he had encountered in Gaul. He destroyed 
Aquileia after a three-month siege. Fugitives fled before him 
into the marshes of the Adriatic where they settled on the site 
of the future Venice. The road to Rome lay open but Attila 
allowed himself to be bought off by an embassy of Roman citi¬ 
zens, among whom was Leo I, bishop of Rome. Attila died in 
453 a.d., and his numerous sons fought over and divided the 
inheritance. So greatly did his name impress the mind and 
stir the imagination of the west that the figure of Attila became 
legendary and half-mythical, and as such is a part of the litera¬ 
ture of the middle ages. Many centuries later the painter Raphael 
chose the meeting between Pope Leo I and Attila as the subject 
of one of his frescoes in the Vatican. In the fresco the princely 
pope is depicted as prevailing upon the half-savage Attila to 
lead his followers out of Italy, thus symbolizing the triumph 
of Roman civilization over barbarism. “Christian Rome was 
stepping into the place of imperial Rome. . . . Attila, whom 
Roman armies could not withstand, receded before the Roman 
pope.” 


Sack of Rome by the Vandals 

As the hordes of Attila disappeared over the horizon Roman 
authority once more stood intact and secure in Italy, but it was 
not for long. As though the peril from without was not enough, 
Rome began, now, to beat out her own brains. A recital of the 


74 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


bare facts will illustrate the inconceivable folly of those who 
still wielded the authority of Rome in the West. Valentinian III, 
then emperor, summoned iEtius to Ravenna and killed him 
with his own hand. The emperor himself was struck down a 
little later in the city of Rome in broad daylight by some soldiers 
of his bodyguard. The next emperor was Petronius Maximus, a 
former senator. A year later he was stoned to death by the Ro¬ 
man people. 

Three days after this exhibition of mob violence the Vandals, 
led by their king Gaiseric, descended upon Rome and subjected 
the city to a two weeks 7 sack. As in the case of the Goths half 
a century earlier, there does not seem to have been much wan¬ 
ton destruction of buildings nor much loss of life. “Vandalism” 
as a term of opprobrium is as inappropriate when applied to 
the methods of the Vandals as is the term “Gothic” when ap¬ 
plied to mediaeval architecture. Both are literary terms first 
used in France during the classical revival of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries. The Temple of Jupiter Capitoline, however, 
was stripped by the Vandals and the imperial palace was looted of 
its furnishings. Some of the plunder of the palace was intended 
for the royal residence at Carthage, no doubt. Included in the 
loot carried off to Carthage were the vessels of Solomon’s 
Temple. These had been brought to Rome after the capture of 
Jerusalem by Titus, in 70 a.d., and were borne aloft in the 
triumphal procession, as may be seen in the reliefs carved on 
the Arch of Titus which still stands in the Forum at Rome. 
Half a century later, when Carthage was taken by the forces of 
the eastern Empire, the sacred relics of the Jewish faith were 
carried to Constantinople, whence they were returned to Jeru¬ 
salem. Completing the circuit, after five centuries, the history 
of these famous relics illustrates the mutations of time. 

The Last of the Roman Emperors 

Following the death of the emperor Maximus and the sack 
of Rome by the Vandals the Roman troops in Italy, now mainly 
German, set up a succession of puppet emperors. Ricimer, 
a Sueve, was followed by Orestes, a former lieutenant of Attila. 
Orestes had married the daughter of a Roman noble named 


THE INVASIONS 


75 


Romulus and he called his son by the same name. To such 
depths had the imperial office now descended that the Roman 
soldiers set up the child Romulus as emperor, calling him the 
“Little Augustus” (Romulus Augustulus). This was in 473. 
Orestes continued to rule in the name of his son, but under 
these circumstances no regime could last long. He lost the 
confidence of his army, because he would not give them land 
in Italy, perhaps, and a rival leader, a German by the name of 
Odoacer, led the army against Orestes, who had shut himself 
up in Pavia. Pavia was taken and Orestes killed. The boy 
emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was given a pension and re¬ 
tired to a villa in Campania. 

Now follows the famous incident of which, no doubt, too 
much has been made. The Senate, which still dragged out a 
precarious existence at Rome, accepted the abdication of the 
boy emperor in obedience to the commands of Odoacer and 
formally agreed to the transfer of the seat of empire in the West 
to Constantinople. Certain insignia of empire were actually 
sent to the emperor Zeno there. It seems to have been Odoacer’s 
idea to set himself up in Italy as the lieutenant of the eastern 
emperor. In this way, while still formally under imperial 
authority, Italy, like Africa, Spain, and Gaul, might become 
in reality the seat of a barbarian kingdom. 

The Kingdom of the East Goths 

But there is one more act in the drama of the Great Invasion. 
Zeno, though accepting the insignia of empire and the over¬ 
lordship of the West, declined to accept Odoacer as his lieuten¬ 
ant and determined to drive him out of Italy. He selected 
Theodoric, now king of the East Goths, to perform this task. 
It will be remembered that the East Goths had submitted to 
the Huns a century earlier. They had remained in subjection 
until the death of Attila. They then sought lands in the Em¬ 
pire and were settled in Pannonia. Theodoric, illegitimate son 
of a former king, became king of the East Goths in 476, the 
same year as the famous “abdication” of the last Roman em¬ 
peror in the West. The young prince had spent half his life 
at Constantinople where he seems to have acquired a vast re- 


76 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


spect for classical culture and Roman authority. Apparently, 
however, he did not receive even the rudiments of an education, 
as he could neither read nor write. He remained essentially 
a barbarian. But Theodoric had managed to win the confidence 
of Zeno and that was a very important matter, for the emperor 
commissioned Theodoric to conquer Italy in his name. So the 
East Goths set out, men, women, and children. They were 
doubtless the most numerous of any of the German invaders, 
numbering between two and three hundred thousand. 

Crossing the Alps in midwinter, the East Goths engaged in 
a stubborn contest with the forces of Odoacer in the valleys 
of the Adige and the Adda. Odoacer was driven back on Ravenna 
and a three-year siege ensued. The deadlock between the two 
contending forces resulted in a truce, following which Theodoric 
treacherously killed Odoacer with his own hand. This was in 
the year 493, which is the foundation year of the East Gothic 
kingdom. For however Theodoric may have posed as the 
lieutenant of the eastern emperor, he ruled Italy by virtue of 
the military authority of his own followers. 

The Fall of Rome 

Roman authority in Italy and the West was now at an end. 
This collapse of the Roman state is commonly referred to as 
the “fall of Rome”. But this expressive phrase expresses too 
much. The fall of Rome was in reality a slow “weathering” 
process, so gradual that, as the saying is, “Rome fell but the 
Romans didn’t know it.” They thought it was an economic 
depression. Further, though the break-up of the Roman state 
in the West was complete, the same must not be said or thought 
of Roman civilization. There was a decline in civilization, no 
doubt; the break-up of the Roman state helps to explain that. 
But while the Roman state decayed the Roman church still 
flourished. Civilization did not so much decline as change its 
course. The stream in which civilization had been carried in 
solution had been the Roman Empire; after the fall of Rome it 
was the Roman church. 

There have been those who would persuade us that western 
civilization has now definitely entered a period of decline. Dean 


THE INVASIONS 


77 


Inge has said, “We are now witnessing the suicide of a social 
order, and our descendants will marvel at our madness.” San¬ 
tayana has written, “ Civilization is perhaps approaching one 
of those long winters that overtake it from time to time/’ 
Professor McDougall has brought the matter closer home. “As 
I watch the American nation,” he writes, “speeding gaily with 
invincible optimism down the road to destruction, I seem to 
be contemplating the greatest tragedy in the history of man¬ 
kind.” It is not necessary to subscribe to these sentiments 
either in whole or in part. It may be doubted whether any man 
may know so much of his own time as these men seem to know. 
Two observations may be made, however. First, we can have no 
assurance whatever that our civilization will endure. The world 
has seen the rise of many great civilizations. For every one, 
thus far, there has come, as a seemingly normal part of its 
life cycle, the “long winter” of decline. Secondly, if our civiliza¬ 
tion is to have any hope of enduring it must become a civiliza¬ 
tion of the masses. The history of the decline of Rome teaches 
this. It is a hopeful sign, therefore, that, for the first time in 
history, western nations are committed to the task of mass 
education. 

For Further Reading 
W. R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas, p. 45 

J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages , 
chaps. 3 and 4 

Cambridge Mediaeval History, I, chaps. 9, 10, 13, and 14 
T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders 
E. A. Freeman, Western Europe in the Fifth Century 
J. B. Bury, The Later Roman Empire, Bk. II, chaps. 6 and 7; Bk. Ill, 
chaps. 4 and 5 

Jordanes, Gothic History. (English version by C. C. Merow.) The 
sole surviving history of the East Goths. Written by a sixth 
century bishop of Ravenna 

Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks. (Translation with an in¬ 
troduction by 0. M. Dalton.) Gregory was a sixth century bishop 
of Tours 


CHAPTER SEVEN 

THE NEW GERMAN KINGDOMS 

Contribution to European Civilization 

The century of invasions was now at an end. All the western 
provinces of Rome had been lost. By 500 a.d. new barbarian 
kingdoms had been set up in Italy, Africa, Spain, Gaul, and 
Britain. It remains to survey briefly the history and civiliza¬ 
tion of these German kingdoms. It may be said at once that 
they made little or no distinctive contribution to European 
civilization. Some writers have advanced the optimistic thesis 
that the influx of fresh, unspoiled barbarians worked a regenera¬ 
tion in the decaying civilization of Rome, but this is untenable. 
It cannot even be maintained that the political institutions of 
the new kingdoms were better than the Roman institutions which 
they in part supplanted. Nor can the opposite point of view 
be successfully maintained, namely, that the invasions resulted 
in a great social upheaval by which a mortal wound was given 
to ancient culture. 

It is clear that the invaders themselves had no desire to de¬ 
stroy the Roman world. At best they seem to have wished to 
place themselves at Rome’s service and at the worst, and this 
perhaps was more frequently the case, they seem to have de¬ 
sired to live at Rome’s expense. The invaders were not enemies 
of Rome. They had long been acquainted with the Romans, as 
had the Romans with them. Fusion between Roman and German 
had been going on slowly through the four or five centuries pre¬ 
ceding the invasions. Fusion now continued, though more 
rapidly, until a single civilization was achieved, more barbarian 
than the Roman but much more Roman than the barbarian. 

The Germans Were Romanized 

A brief comparison of the numbers involved will indicate 
that the disappearance of these kingdoms and of their culture 
was foreordained. The Vandals numbered possibly 80,000; the 

78 


THE NEW GERMAN KINGDOMS 


79 


West Goths, 150,000 to 200,000; the East Goths, 200,000 or 
300,000; the Burgundians, not over 80,000. These numbers 
should be contrasted with the Roman provincials, of whom there 
were some eight million in Italy, ten to twelve million in Gaul, 
and eight to ten million in Spain. It should be said, of course, 
that the mixture of Roman provincials and German invaders 
was not everywhere the same. Northern Italy, northern and 
eastern Gaul, and parts of Roman Britain had apparently been 
almost deserted by the native stock just before or during the 
period of invasions, and in these areas the German stock must 
therefore have been very numerous and their influence rela¬ 
tively great and permanent. Not that the barbarian peoples 
and their institutions went down without a struggle. There 
seems to have been not only a conscious but also a determined 
effort on their part to maintain their separate dress, customs, 
laws, religion, language, and even their racial stock. But all 
these attempts ended in failure. The Romanizing process went 
steadily forward. 

Take the matter of language, for example. The German mi¬ 
nority had to take over the task of governing the Roman provin¬ 
cials. They found that the easiest and in fact the only possible 
way to do this was to continue the administrative organization 
of the Roman government. This meant continuing in office the 
Roman official class, who knew only Latin. The German king 
and his German nobles had perforce to learn Latin. Latin 
became, thus, the language of government. For similar reasons 
it also became the language of trade. Naturally it remained 
the language of learning and thus the language of prestige. 
The rival Germanic languages had no chance at all. They never 
even became written languages. When the German rulers came 
to write down their own Germanic law they used the Latin 
language. There is to-day scarcely a trace of the influence of 
the Germanic tongues on the languages of the peoples of Gaul, 
Spain, and Italy. These peoples speak languages derived di¬ 
rectly and almost wholly from Latin. In North Africa and in 
Roman Britain, on the contrary, Roman civilization itself 
was blotted out as we shall see, and with it, of course, went 
Latin. 


80 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


We may see the dissolving away of the Germanic element in 
the economic realm. The conquerors seem to have seized, in 
general, about two-thirds of the land of the peoples among 
whom they settled; that is to say, every estate, large and small, 
was divided into three parts, of which two would be given to 
a German. This division would apply not only to the agricul¬ 
tural land but also to the coloni, the slaves, the live stock, and 
the meadow and woodland. The king usually took over the 
whole of the former imperial land and the nobles of course 
got the lion’s share of the private land. However, all this 
division affected the economic processes of society very little. 
Cultivation went on much as usual. The German landlords, 
knowing nothing of agriculture except of the most primitive 
sort, were content to stand aside. Their primary occupation 
in any case was fighting and their only real economic interest, 
and this is rather characteristic, found expression in the tend¬ 
ing of huge herds of swine. 

The Kingdom of the Vandals 

It will be well to illustrate the points just made by briefly 
examining the history of each of the several German kingdoms 
in turn. We will begin with the Vandals. Their conquest of 
northern Africa seems unusually swift and sweeping when one 
considers that they could count not more than 15,000 warriors 
among them. In ten years they established their power through¬ 
out the Roman provinces of northern Africa, in the Balearic 
Isles, and in Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily. From their Sicilian 
base they carried their attacks to southern Italy and as far north 
as the mouth of the Tiber. In the year 455 they sacked Rome. 
This career of conquest fell entirely within the reign and was 
accomplished under the leadership of the Vandals’ first, and 
in fact their only great, king, Gaiseric, who died in 477. 

The ease of the conquest is to be explained by the fact that 
the Vandals met with practically no opposition. The native 
peasantry and serfs welcomed and may even have invited the 
conquest. Roman civilization, despite the six hundred years 
of Roman rule, had never become indigenous in northern Africa 
but had remained a thin veneer. The civilization of northern 


THE NEW GERMAN KINGDOMS 


81 


Africa was fundamentally Oriental in character. Punic con¬ 
tinued to be the language of the peasantry and in the more rural 
districts it was the sole language. Pagan worship stubbornly 
resisted the blandishments of Christianity and pagan practices 
survived, including the sacrifice of children to Moloch. The 
parallelism of Africa under Roman rule and modern India under 
British rule is a strikingly exact one. Furthermore, Roman land¬ 
lordism had had in northern Africa its most advanced develop¬ 
ment and had exhibited its worst features. Vast estates were 
tilled by gangs of serfs or slaves. Only a generation before the 
Vandal conquest a savage revolt had occurred. It was sup¬ 
pressed with difficulty and the old regime came back more cruelly 
and oppressively than ever. The Vandals crossed into Africa 
probably as allies of the rebellious natives. It seems certain that 
the lot of the natives was better under the Vandals than under 
the Romans. 

Vandal rule in Africa, however, was short-lived and Vandal 
influence negligible. The conquerors were less numerous in 
proportion to the total population than anywhere else in the 
West. Furthermore, in intermarrying and amalgamating with 
the native stock the Vandals were commingling their blood with 
that of a people much inferior to themselves. The forces of the 
Eastern Empire under Justinian overthrew the Vandal rule in 
a single campaign, as we shall see. Not one word of the Vandal 
tongue has survived. The appalling work of destruction in 
northern Africa, which began under Vandal rule and went on 
continuously after the overthrow of that rule, might seem to 
give a certain validity to the term “Vandalism’’. Certainly 
there was destruction enough and to spare, so complete as to 
leave the countryside desolate, but this was the work of the 
enraged peasantry first of all, and later of the wild tribes who 
sifted through from the desert. Rome had been able to hold 
these tribes in check for centuries, but the Roman dike was 
broken and the desert tide flowed in again. 

The Kingdom of the West Goths 

From the Vandals we may turn to the West Goths. Their 
political capital remained at Toulouse in southern Gaul. The 


82 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


imperial lands were seized for the Gothic monarchy. Of private 
land, the Goths seem to have seized two-thirds. Most of it went 
to the Gothic nobility. This was particularly true in Spain, 
where the nobility became more powerful than the crown. The 
tribal assembly, the central political institution of the Germanic 
peoples, could not be maintained in a political unit so large as 
the West Gothic kingdom. A certain amount of political au¬ 
thority was exercised by the army, which was still the assembly 
of all the freemen. The monarchy, however, had developed in 
authority and prestige during the period of the migration of the 
Goths. It was their most important political institution. The 
Goths seem to have made a certain amount of effort to main¬ 
tain their own racial stock, their native dress, and their custom¬ 
ary law when settled among the Roman provincials. These 
Romans formed the bulk of the population, of course. For them 
life seems to have gone on very much as before. 

One considerable Teutonic reaction against the inevitable 
Romanization occurred when prince Euric murdered his two 
Romanized brothers and seized the throne in 466. He managed 
to maintain himself for the next twenty years, successfully 
beating off the attacks of Franks, Burgundians, and Romans. 
But the struggle to maintain Gothic institutions was a futile 
one. Their enemies were both numerous and formidable. To 
mention one only, the whole of the Roman provincials re¬ 
mained Catholic and fanatically devoted to their religion. They 
were led by their clergy, who bitterly hated their Arian and, 
therefore, heretical Gothic rulers. In Spain the Roman Catholic 
bishops were especially powerful and they, together with the 
Gothic nobility, reduced the power of the king to a mere shadow. 
In southern Gaul Gothic rule was displaced by that of the 
Franks in 507 a.d. as the result of a single battle fought 
near Poitiers. The Saracens crossed to Spain from Africa in 
711 a.d. and quickly extinguished all remnants of Gothic 
authority there. 

The Kingdom of the East Goths 

Finally, we may notice briefly the history of the kingdom of 
the East Goths. Theodoric, conqueror of Italy, was their great- 


THE NEW GERMAN KINGDOMS 


83 


est king. In fact, the entire history of the East Gothic kingdom 
is little more than the story of the reign of this man (493-526). 
We may say at once that his reign offered the best opportunity 
ever known in the West for the development of a real Germano- 
Roman civilization in which each element was given a fair 
chance to make whatever contribution to the whole was within 
its power. Theodoric himself was in complete sympathy with 
Roman culture and with Roman institutions. He had conquered 
Italy as the lieutenant of the eastern emperor and he strove to 
maintain a correct attitude toward the emperor throughout 
his reign. The emperor’s portrait appeared upon Theodoric’s 
coins and the emperor’s name was written beside Theodoric’s 
own on the monuments and public buildings of Italy. But be¬ 
yond this Theodoric would not go. In reality he ruled Italy as a 
completely independent sovereign, repulsing the several at¬ 
tempts made by the eastern emperor to advance his authority 
in Italy beyond the merely formal stage. 

Toward the Roman provincials in Italy Theodoric’s attitude 
was not only conciliatory but even ingratiating. Though an 
Arian himself, Theodoric proclaimed and enforced religious 
toleration and even knelt in pious devotion at the tomb of 
St. Peter. He made his bow to the moribund Senate, promising 
to maintain Roman political institutions. He left the Roman 
landed aristocracy in undisturbed possession of their estates. 
It seems that only the public land was seized by the East Goths 
for distribution among themselves. Theodoric took prompt and 
vigorous steps to restore a measure of economic prosperity 
to Italy. He undertook the drainage of swamps to enlarge the 
acreage available for growing grain. He deepened the harbors 
to facilitate the shipment of wheat into Ravenna and Rome. 
In Rome itself he repaired the aqueducts, restored old monu¬ 
ments, and appointed police to guard the marble and brass 
statues of the city which the populace were destroying. In 
further imitation of Rome’s greatest emperors, Theodoric be¬ 
came a builder, erecting a number of splendid structures in 
Ravenna, his capital. One church built in his reign, that of 
St. Apollinaris the New, still stands. He even built a tomb for 
himself in the Roman manner. It was capped by a single block 


84 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


of stone thirty-six feet in diameter and weighing five hundred 
tons, brought from across the Adriatic. Theodoric’s foreign 
policy had as its objective the security and prosperity of Italy. 
He made marriage alliances of his daughters, his sisters, and 
himself to the royal houses of Burgundy, the West Goths, the 
Vandals, and the Franks. He managed to settle a number of 
incipient international quarrels among his neighbors by his 
skillful arbitration. No ruler before Charlemagne so nearly 
succeeded in bringing peace to western Europe. Theodoric was 
laying the foundations of a renewed and improving civilization. 



As was inevitable, however, all this was shabbily received by 
the Roman provincials. The Catholic clergy remained bitterly 
hostile to Arian rule. Theodoric had even revived the imperial 
panem et circenses, but the populace bit the hand that fed them. 
The Roman landed aristocracy abused the freedom which 
Theodoric had allowed them and fortified their manor houses, 
waging private war on each other with armies of serfs and slaves. 
Plots against Theodoric were numerous. Angry and embittered, 
Theodoric struck back at last with old-time savagery. Boethius, 
a Roman of noble family high in Theodoric’s service, was seized 
at the king’s orders and thrust into prison. After a period of 






THE NEW GERMAN KINGDOMS 


85 


imprisonment he was tortured by the twisting of a cord around 
his head and then killed by a blow from a club. Other bloody 
executions of Roman officials followed, including that of Sym- 
machus, the most illustrious Roman of his time. These exe¬ 
cutions wrecked the policy of conciliation. Bitter hostility 
ensued between the Gothic conquerors, less than ten per cent 
of the population, and the Roman provincials. Theodoric’s 
death was interpreted as an act of God, the Catholic clergy even 
asserting that they had seen the devil carry him off on a black 
charger. The body of the dead king was cast out of the mauso¬ 
leum which he had built and the tomb itself converted into a 
church. 

The reigns of Theodoric’s successors were brief and troubled. 
Ten years after the death of the great king the armies of the 
eastern emperor arrived and were welcomed by the Roman 
aristocracy and the Catholic clergy. A twenty-year struggle 
ensued in which the city of Rome was five times taken by assault. 
The end of the East Gothic kingdom came in 554. Except the 
Franks in northern Gaul and the Angles and Saxons in Britain, 
who proved resistant, the German invaders at the close of the 
sixth century had melted away in their Roman environment 
like grains of sugar in a cup of tea. 

Decline of Cities 

We have now arrived at the close of the two centuries of in¬ 
vasion and occupation and it is important to inquire what was 
the state of civilization in the West. In the economic realm 
decline had been widespread. Commerce in the world-wide 
sense, as carried on under the Roman Empire, had practically 
ceased. This meant that western Europe was now in almost 
entire isolation from the Greek world of the eastern Mediter¬ 
ranean. Industry likewise was limited by this time to produc¬ 
tion for local needs. Communities had to learn again to be 
self-sufficing. City life declined greatly and grass grew in the 
city streets all over western Europe. 

The decline of city life was particularly marked in Roman 
Britain. There the whole municipal organization was broken 
up, and invading Angles and Saxons seem not in any single 


86 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


case to have taken up residence in a Roman city. These aban¬ 
doned Roman cities quickly fell into disrepair. Everything of 
value that could be carried off was carried off during the en¬ 
suing generations. The desolate and ghostly remains of these 
Roman cities haunted the landscapes of Anglo-Saxon England 
for centuries until, finally, they disappeared completely beneath 
the soil and were lost to the memory of man. The Roman city 
of Bath, for example, which in its extent and development ex¬ 
cites the wonder of the modern tourist, vanished from the knowl¬ 
edge of man at the fall of Rome and remained completely buried 
until late in the eighteenth century. Perhaps just as remark¬ 
able is the fact that the sites of the cities of mediaeval France 
rarely coincide with those of the earlier Roman municipia of 
Gaul. In general it may be said that the world-economy of 
Rome with its interdependent municipal communities gave way 
to a house-economy of self-sufficing village communities. Esti¬ 
mates of the decline of population are untrustworthy, but a 
recent authority is of opinion that the population of the Danube 
provinces, of the Rhine provinces, and of Gaul showed a de¬ 
crease of from one-half to two-thirds. 

The decline in civilization can be clearly seen in art. Coins 
were crudely made and the volume of coinage was greatly 
diminished. There was little building and the materials used 
were in most cases carelessly quarried from ancient buildings. 
The church was the chief despoiler here, perhaps. Marble bath¬ 
tubs became baptismal fonts. Marble chairs formerly used by 
Roman senators became the seats of bishops and were placed 
in the choirs of cathedrals. 

Decline of the City of Rome 

We may perhaps use the decline of the city of Rome itself 
as an epitome of the decline of Roman civilization. The city 
had suffered severely during the two centuries of invasion and 
occupation. It had been taken by assault five times in the 
sixth century, as we have seen, and it had been put to sack 
three times in the preceding century. The destruction of Rome’s 
aqueducts was especially fatal. The aqueducts were cut by the 
East Goths during their prolonged resistance to the attacks of 


THE NEW GERMAN KINGDOMS 


87 


the Eastern Empire. Water was no longer available for the 
palaces of the Roman aristocracy in the higher quarters of the 
city. These palaces were therefore abandoned and soon sank 
into ruins. The numerous and extensive public baths had to 
be closed and soon fell into decay. The population, which in 
the heyday of Rome had been upwards of a million, had sunk 
by the year 600 a.d. to 50,000. As the population of Rome 
diminished in numbers, so it lost in public spirit. As we have 
seen, the Romans began to help themselves to the marbles 
of their public buildings. Marble statues of great artistic value 
were thrown into the lime kiln to supply mortar. Other marble 
was used as building material for mediaeval churches or palaces 
or even ground up to serve as paving material. This despoiling 
and quarrying process continued through a thousand years, 
until the revival of interest in classical culture which we call 
the Renascence checked it. The ruins of Rome are largely the 
work of the Romans. Through the cutting of the aqueducts, 
furthermore, the countryside around Rome was flooded with 
water. The fertile wheat fields of the Campagna became a vast 
malarial swamp. For centuries this pestilential area remained 
uninhabitable and is even yet a source of the well known and 
much dreaded Roman fever. 

Decline of Learning 

We must now inquire what effect the two centuries of inva¬ 
sion and occupation had on ancient learning. An outstanding 
fact which we may notice at once is that the West of Europe 
had lost contact culturally as well as politically with the Greek 
world. In the days of Rome’s dominion every western man with 
any pretensions to education knew the Greek language well, 
and so had easy and personal access to Greek scientific knowl¬ 
edge and to the philosophical and literary ideas of the Greeks. 
With the loss of direct contact with the East this was no longer 
so. The few western scholars of the fifth, sixth, and seventh cen¬ 
turies who still knew Greek had to make it their business to 
translate the works of Greek learning into Latin, with explan¬ 
atory comments. 

Further, there was an absolute decline in the learning of 


88 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the West itself. We have already seen this beginning in the 
later centuries of the Roman Empire. A deadening process 
had set in. Rhetoric took the place of eloquence. Textual criti¬ 
cism supplanted creative literature; the sources of inspiration 
were running dry. The scholars of the later Roman Empire 
busied themselves with bringing out definitive texts of the 
great Roman classics with commentaries and notes. It is clear 
that a work of literature which requires explanation has lost 
much of its freshness of appeal. The ambition of the scholars 
of the later Roman centuries, then, was to conserve and pre¬ 
serve the Roman classics very much as a housewife, during 
the autumn, preserves the fruits of the summer season. This 
process and this attitude of mind continued during the centuries 
of invasion and occupation which followed the fall of Rome. 

There appeared a group of scholars whose deliberate purpose, 
it would seem, was to serve as intermediaries between ancient 
culture and the mediaeval centuries, to act as summarizers of 
what they took to be the best things of ancient culture and to 
transmit them to the mediaeval world. This is obviously a most 
important matter, for it was the work of this group of trans¬ 
mitters to provide the textbooks used in the schools of the middle 
ages for a thousand years. We will notice three of this group 
of transmitters, Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Isidore. 

Boethius and Cassiodorus were contemporaries. Both were 
descended from noble Roman families of Italy. Boethius died, 
or rather was put to death, in 524, at the age of forty-three. 
Cassiodorus was a year or two older than Boethius and sur¬ 
vived him by more than fifty years. Isidore of Seville belongs 
to a later generation. His productive life fell in the first part 
of the next century (d. 636). These three scholars, if indeed 
Isidore may be called a scholar, form three links in the chain 
which binds the middle ages to the ancient world. Boethius 
was completely under the spell of Greek learning. Though 
doubtless he was an adherent of Christianity, there is almost no 
trace of Christian influence in his writings. Cassiodorus had 
escaped from the spell of Greek learning, though he still re¬ 
spected it and devoted himself to preserving it. Isidore was 
wholly mediaeval. 


THE NEW GERMAN KINGDOMS 


89 


Boethius 

We must learn a little more of each of these three. Boethius, 
born in 481, received an excellent education, especially in Greek. 
He entered political life and early became a high official in the 
service of Theodoric, king of the East Goths. His learned 
translations and treatises were all written in such leisure time 
as he could command in the midst of his official duties. All his 
sources seem to have been Greek, either directly or indirectly. 
The field of his interest was very wide, including geometry, 
arithmetic, astronomy, logic, and philosophy. He drew upon 
Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, Archimedes, Ptolemy, and other Greek 
writers of lesser note. The usual procedure of Boethius was to 
translate the Greek work in question into Latin and add more 
or less extensive comment, which in some cases contained orig¬ 
inal ideas. His translations and commentaries form almost 
the sole channel through which Greek learning flowed to the 
mediaeval men of the West until the translations from the Arabic 
some centuries later. Boethius’s love of intellectual labor makes 
it evident that the affinity of his mind was ancient culture. In 
one of his commentaries he writes. “Idleness deadens the mind. 
Not experience but ignorance of labor turns us from it, for 
what man who has made a trial of labor has ever forsaken it? 
And the power of the mind lies in keeping the mind tense. To 
unstring it is to ruin it.” This was written at the age of thirty- 
five, when Boethius avowed his purpose of translating the whole 
of the works of Aristotle and Plato; though this he did not ac¬ 
complish. In his earliest translation, the arithmetic of Nicln 
omachus, done at the age of twenty, Boethius refers to arith¬ 
metic, music, geometry, and astronomy as the four-fold path or 
quadrivium of the scholar. This classification, so famous through¬ 
out the mediaeval centuries, may be original with Boethius, as 
no earlier reference is known. 

This most important function of Boethius as a transmitter 
of Greek thought to the middle ages has been somewhat ob¬ 
scured by the later fame of his 11 Consolations of Philosophy.” 
This “golden book, worthy of the leisure of Plato or Tully”, 
was written while Boethius was in prison awaiting torture and 


90 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


execution. In it he compares his present fate with his former 
lot in life and manages by the effort of his mind to take it 
philosophically. The work was popular with successive genera¬ 
tions of readers for a thousand years, despite the entire absence 
from it of Christian influence. Both Alfred and Chaucer trans¬ 
lated it into the vernacular. Many generations have found its 
“controlled and noble pathos” very moving. 

Cassiodorus 

Cassiodorus was of a family three generations of which had 
filled high offices in the Roman state. He himself served Theod- 
oric and Theodoric’s successors for forty years, finally obtain¬ 
ing the highest office in the gift of the East Gothic kings, that 
of praetorian prefect. He then retired and founded two monas¬ 
teries in his native town of Squillace, which overlooks the little 
Gulf of Calabria in southern Italy. There Cassiodorus began 
a second career as collector and preserver of the learning of the 
past, a career which was to last for more than thirty years. He 
was not a scholar in the sense in which Boethius was. Cassio¬ 
dorus devoted himself to collecting and transcribing manu¬ 
scripts. He persuaded his monks to busy themselves with the 
labor of transcribing, compiling, and annotating. This was 
partly because he actually had some appreciation for classical 
learning and wanted to inspire similar tastes in his monks, but 
it was also, and perhaps even more, “to bring salvation to man¬ 
kind and to fight the devil’s illicit temptation with pen and ink.” 
Cassiodorus was thus the originator of the labors so familiar 
to us in the mediaeval monastic scriptorium. This sort of work 
may seem to us, at first, to be less important than the work of 
Boethius, but it was perhaps even more important. It has been 
said that there is nothing of ancient literature now extant which 
has not come down to us through copies made in and preserved 
by mediaeval monasteries. Manuscripts of a date earlier than 
the sixth century are to-day exceedingly rare. The little original 
work which Cassiodorus did we find scarcely worth attention. 
His suggested etymology of the word “library” may excite our 
friendly interest in these days of free public libraries. Cassio¬ 
dorus derives the word from the Latin “libere” meaning 


THE NEW GERMAN KINGDOMS 


91 


“freely”. Libraries, he says, freely serve God. His last work 
was a compilation of Latin orthography, written in his ninety- 
third year. 


Isidore of Seville 

Isidore was a Roman provincial of Spain who became bishop 
of Seville, the most important bishopric in the land. As bishop 
he commanded a very considerable revenue and he devoted 
some part of it to collecting a library of secular and Christian 
books. He stands much closer to the middle ages than do 
Boethius and Cassiodorus, in taste as well as in time. 

Isidore was a child of his own time, and like a child, in a dif¬ 
ferent sense, he gathered from the treasures of ancient culture 
that which took his fancy at the moment and lay nearest at 
hand. He had an infallible instinct for selecting from a classical 
author his most foolish statements; he “invariably exhibits his 
authors at their worst”. His works, therefore, are a miscella¬ 
neous collection of odds and ends with very little rhyme and less 
reason. But this conglomerate of knowledge secular and pro¬ 
fane seems to have been exactly suited to the taste of the coming 
centuries. Isidore’s “ Etymology,” a vast collection of defini¬ 
tions and terms with very little actual information in it, was none 
the less widely used in the middle ages. It may be worth men¬ 
tioning that Isidore wrote a history of the Goths which, though 
he was a Roman provincial, was full of pride in Gothic achieve¬ 
ments. As though by instinct he seemed to feel that Roman 
culture was doomed and that the future belonged to other 
peoples. 

For Further Reading 

In addition to the references given under Chapter Six— 

Cambridge Mediaeval History, I, chaps. 11 and 14 
B. Abelson, The Seven Liberal Arts 
T. Hodgkin, Theodoric the Ostrogoth 
F. Gregorovius, Rome in the Middle Ages, vol. I 
H. Bradley, Story of the Goths from the Earliest Times to the End of the 
Gothic Dominion in Spain 
Cassiodorus, Letters. (Translated by T. Hodgkin.) 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST 

Roman Survival in the East 

The whole of western Europe had been lost to the Roman 
Empire so far as political authority goes, and forever lost as 
we now know. The emperors at Constantinople, however, were 
not so sure. In their view there had come to be an occupation 
of the western provinces by barbarians, which was, however, 
strictly temporary and which, moreover, the authorities in the 
East had sought to control and regularize. Beginning in the 
middle of the fifth century the Empire in the East had been 
slowly gathering strength, and under Justinian, 527-565 a.d., 
there began the remarkable attempt of the Eastern Empire to 
turn back the stream of history. A study of this attempt will 
reveal to us the innate strength of that Empire. Though the 
western provinces were not permanently regained, the strength 
of the Eastern Empire proved great enough to keep it alive for 
a thousand years after the fall of Rome in the West. During 
this thousand years, furthermore, a very high standard of 
civilization was maintained. In the first few centuries of the 
period Byzantine civilization was perhaps the only real civiliza¬ 
tion in the western world. 

In its political institutions the Eastern Empire was simply 
the Empire founded by Augustus living on. It was always 
known even by its eastern neighbors as Rum. Some of its prov¬ 
inces were even of Latin speech. Justinian himself was born 
in the Balkan province of Dardania where Latin was the speech 
of the populace. The names and titles of the officials of the 
Empire were either Latin, or Greek translations from the Latin. 
All the greatest public buildings of Constantinople, the Hip¬ 
podrome, the Great Palace, and St. Sophia, were built by 
emperors of Latin speech. Rome may have fallen, but surely 
these Romans of Constantinople did not know it. 

92 


THE HOMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST 


93 


The Eastern Empire’s Sources of Strength 

We may well inquire what were the sources of strength which 
enabled the Roman Empire in the East to survive the Roman 
Empire in the West for a thousand years. A very large part 
of the answer is to be found in the economic realm. The economic 
foundations of society and government in the East had suffered 
little impairment. They were still solid. The East had always 
been and was still famous for the size and strength of its cities. 
Eastern civilization had always been and still was a city civili¬ 
zation primarily. The growth of a powerful landed aristocracy 
with its disintegrating tendencies, a factor which had destroyed 
the economic foundations of the West, had never really estab¬ 
lished itself in the East, although it was not entirely absent. 
It will be remembered that the barbarian invaders had turned 
aside almost always from attempts to take the great eastern 
cities. 

The City of Constantinople 

Of all these cities incomparably the greatest was Constan¬ 
tinople. It was great primarily because of its strategic position, 
both military and commercial. The founding of an eastern 
capital in the time of Constantine was in the logic of Roman 
history. The two greatest danger areas of the Roman Empire 
had always been the lower Danube and the Euphrates. Further¬ 
more, an eastern capital was needed as the center of the Hel¬ 
lenic world, always an important division of the ancient world 
and now for a long time without an acknowledged center. 
Constantine had finally decided upon the ‘ ‘ blunt triangle ’ ’ where 
Europe reaches out towards Asia, at the mouth of the Black 
Sea. Surrounded on the north, east, and south by water, Con¬ 
stantinople was exposed to attack by land only to the west. 
Along the base of the triangle on the west, therefore, Constan¬ 
tine built, two and a half miles from the apex of the triangle, 
a wall four miles long. Some miles further west he constructed 
an outer wall as a first line of defense. The city was thus prac¬ 
tically impregnable. For over a thousand years it was never 
taken by direct assault. Constantine pushed his building plans 
rapidly and declared the city “open” May 11, 330 a.d. It 


94 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


was officially known as “New Rome”, but popularly it was 
always called either Constantinople, that is, the city of Con¬ 
stantine, or Stamboul, which means simply “The City.” 

Far more important than ease of defense, however, was the 
new capital’s strategic position with reference to trade. There 
had been a town on the site for over a thousand years before 
Constantine chose it for his capital, a town which had been 
the center of the wheat trade of the Hellenic world. Constan¬ 
tinople thus became and has always remained the entrepot of the 
commerce of the Black Sea, with its two thousand miles of 
coast line. As a Roman capital Constantinople also became 
the western terminus of the age-old trade routes from Asia. 
One of these came from India by water to the Red Sea and thence 
through Egypt to Alexandria. Another trade route out of Asia, 
as old as Abraham, crossed the Persian plateau, traversed 
the plains of Mesopotamia, and ended in the cities of Syria, 
particularly Tyre. 

Egypt and Syria, furthermore, had always been and still were 
the mainstays, economically, of the Empire in the East. Egypt 
maintained its accustomed productivity in cereals and added 
to this a considerable industrial output, especially in textiles 
and glass. Syria supported a dense population which was ac¬ 
tively at work supplying the entire East with wine, oil, and 
grain. It should be noted further that in the reign of Justinian 
a new industry was added, more important than any already 
established, namely, the silk industry. Missionaries brought 
silk worm eggs from China about the year 552 a.d. and taught 
the Greeks the method of caring for them. The culture of co¬ 
coons and the spinning of silk spread rapidly through several 
provinces. Extensive plantations of mulberry trees were set 
out. Silk became one of the chief sources of Byzantine prosperity, 
and for the purchase of this commodity merchants came to 
Constantinople from all over the western world. 

In a word, Constantinople became the commercial center of 
the East. Its population grew rapidly and enormously. Esti¬ 
mates vary between half a million and a million inhabitants. 
The open-air bazaars of the city were thronged with repre¬ 
sentatives of every nationality, speaking every known lan- 


THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST 


95 


guage. The revenues of the government at the time of the city’s 
greatest prosperity are estimated at $60,000,000 in modern 
money. 

The Imperial Government 

The imperial government of the Eastern Empire had retained 
all its old effectiveness. Taxes were very heavy but they were 
rigorously collected by an efficient civil service. The inhabitants 
of the Eastern Empire might almost be called “the slaves of the 
treasury.” In its efforts to tap every possible source of revenue 
the government regulated and interfered with business in a way 
that would not be tolerated to-day. At every stage of the eco¬ 
nomic process from the purchase of raw materials to the retail 
of the finished product the imperial authorities made a levy on 
the profits. Further, the manufacture and sale of many articles 
became a government monopoly, and thus the government 
itself went into business. In all these ways an immense revenue 
flowed into the imperial treasury. This made it possible to carry 
on the business of government smoothly and efficiently through 
the highly trained and well paid civil service. The defenses of 
the Empire could be adequately provided for. A large fleet 
well manned with sailors, chiefly Egyptian, and a large and 
well paid standing army were maintained. Over all and through 
all was the authority of the emperor, absolute and undisputed. 

The despotic power of the emperor Justinian was exhibited 
in ecclesiastical affairs. The church was, in reality, a servant 
of the state. Justinian was especially interested in the church, 
partly because of his authority as emperor and also, in part, 
because he was a very devout man. The emperor prided himself 
on his orthodoxy and even intervened to settle theological 
disputes. He summoned the Fifth General Council which met 
at Constantinople in 553 a.d., despite the protests of the 
bishop of Rome. This Council was completely dominated by 
Justinian and issued many severe edicts against paganism, 
which still persisted in unfrequented rural districts. All in all, 
it is estimated that more than 100,000 persons were put to 
death by Justinian in the name of religion. A form of paganism 
still lingered among the cultured classes in the larger cities, also. 


96 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


This was especially true of the teachers of Athens, whose god 
was still philosophy. In his zeal for orthodoxy Justinian closed 
the Platonic Academy and confiscated its property. Seven of 
the professors sought refuge at the court of the king of Persia. 
The closing of the academy was, naturally, a severe blow to 
Greek culture. 


Justinian and Theodora 

The principal weakness of the imperial office, however, as in 
the West, was the lack of a good succession scheme. The office 
remained a possible prize for any man of sufficient strength, 
audacity, and good luck. Justinian himself was not, however, 
merely a successful adventurer. He was a nephew of the pre¬ 
ceding emperor, Justin the First (518-527), and his name was 
originally Petrus Sabbatius. Justinian had been carefully 
trained for the office. He was a man of enormous power of in¬ 
dustry and of considerable intelligence. He took no direct or 
personal part in the vast enterprises of his reign but he thought 
them out, selected men to carry them into effect, and directed 
their movements from his office chair. A distaste for action is 
apparent in Justinian, and this will explain his timorousness 
and vacillation when faced with popular uprisings in the city 
of Constantinople and in other crises. 

From this point of view he was especially fortunate in the 
choice of his wife, the empress Theodora, whom he married the 
year after his succession. Theodora had begun life as the 
daughter of a bear keeper in the amphitheatre at Constantinople. 
She had in superlative measure those natural gifts which give 
power to charm. To these Theodora added cool courage and 
skill in the use of her natural gifts. She became the favorite 
of the populace as a vaudeville artiste. Her private amours, 
which were anything but private, made her notorious through¬ 
out the East. Her marriage to the emperor, whose pious auster¬ 
ities had emaciated his frail body, was amazing. But Theodora 
made Justinian a good wife, energetically and loyally supporting 
his well laid plans. Theodora’s coarse-grained animal courage 
carried Justinian through crises in the palace and in the city 
which more than once threatened to unseat him. 


THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST 


97 


The Attempt to Regain the West 

Builder, law-giver, conqueror, Justinian revived the memories 
of the Roman Empire at its height. His greatest ambition 
seems to have been to regain the lost provinces in the West. 
Justinian first directed his attention to Africa. Vandal rule, 
it must be confessed, was weak. The persecution of the Cath¬ 
olics by the Arian kings of the Vandals had been frightfully 
cruel. Succession quarrels broke out and the emperor soon 
found a pretext for intervention. In 533 his “armada’' was 
launched, setting sail from Constantinople with the blessing 
of the patriarch. There were 500 transports and 92 war gal¬ 
leys. The commander-in-chief, Belisarius, had under his com¬ 
mand 5000 cavalry, 10,000 foot soldiers, and 20,000 sailors. 
The conquest of Africa was not an easy one, however, from the 
military point of view. The Vandal soldiers fought valiantly. 
Belisarius was compelled to proceed slowly and cautiously. It 
has become customary to explain the defeat of the Vandals 
by the word “degeneracy”, but this is not tenable. The Vandals 
were unfortunate in their leader, Gelimer, who was not very 
able and not very lucky. It should be remembered, too, that 
Vandal authority had never actually extended beyond Tunisia. 
In Tripoli, Algeria, and Morocco the Moorish princes had re¬ 
mained practically independent. At last Belisarius was success¬ 
ful, and Justinian set out to efface the traces of Vandal rule. The 
Arian churches became Catholic. The great landed estates 
were restored to the heirs of their former proprietors, and 
the province of Africa was once again governed in the old 
Roman fashion. 

Next came Italy. Here the triumph of Justinian’s armies 
should have been easy but as a matter of fact it was not. The 
war degenerated into a long drawn out agony of twenty years 
(535-555). Italy was laid waste more completely than in any 
previous war, or perhaps one may say than in any war in her 
entire history. Only the Thirty Years’ War in German history 
is comparable in its devastating effects. Belisarius had ridic¬ 
ulously inadequate forces, it is true—not more than 9000 men. 
Even 15,000 or 20,000 men would have enabled him to finish 


98 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the campaign expeditiously and with a minimum of destructive¬ 
ness. As it was, the war dragged on year after year. Justinian 
seems to have realized at last the necessity of decisive action, 
and in 550 he sent out Narses as the successor of Belisarius, with 
plenty of men. The East Gothic rule was completely erased. 
There is not a place name in Italy to-day of Gothic origin; 
nor is there a single word in the Italian language of Gothic 
derivation. 

Ravenna was made the seat of the government of the Eastern 
Empire in Italy, under an exarch. This city was then on the 



seacoast, though to-day it is separated from the Adriatic by 
ten miles of marshland. To the west of the city nature had 
provided an almost impenetrable defense in vast stretches of 
marshes. For over two hundred years Ravenna remained the 
first city of Italy. It was embellished with churches and public 
buildings in the Byzantine manner and remained a principal 
channel through which Byzantine civilization flowed to the 
West. 

Sicily, Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles had fallen to Justinian 
with the conquest of the Vandals. They were stepping stones 
to Spain and made easy and natural an attack on the West 












THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST 


99 


Gothic kingdom there. Here again dynastic troubles favored 
Justinian’s plan. The Roman Catholic provincials were help¬ 
ful, too, and a long stretch of the Mediterranean coast of Spain 
was conquered and the interior penetrated as far as Cordova. 
This represented, however, the furthest stretch of the Empire’s 
strength. Justinian’s financial resources were exhausted. More¬ 
over, fresh dangers in the East aroused the emperor’s con¬ 
cern. The Persians were restless, and the Avars drove west¬ 
ward from Asia and set in motion hordes of Slavs, who now 
entered the Balkan peninsula. Justinian could not even re¬ 
tain what he had already conquered in the West. Three years 
after the emperor’s death (565), the Italian peninsula was again 
a prey to invaders. 

Invasion of the Lombards 

The new invaders of Italy were Lombards, another Germanic 
people, not very numerous but very warlike. They captured 
town after town in the valley of the Po, which takes its name 
from them. The exarch of the Eastern Empire shut himself 
up in Ravenna. The Lombards then pushed southward, crossed 
the Apennines to seize the southern part of the peninsula, and 
founded the outlying dukedoms of Spoleto and Benevento. 
These latest marauders seem to have been in a more primitive 
stage of political development than were the other Germanic 
invaders. The institution of monarchy, rather highly developed 
among the other Germans, was still very weak among the Lom¬ 
bards. There were more than thirty semi-independent Lombard 
dukes who established little principalities in the Italian penin¬ 
sula at this time. They began to busy themselves warring 
with each other and resisting the claims of their nominal king 
in a fashion sadly familiar throughout western Europe in later 
centuries. The center of the Lombard kingdom remained the 
Po valley. Its capital was Pavia, where Lombard kings for 
some centuries were crowned with a famous iron crown. For 
over two hundred years these kings exercised some sort of au¬ 
thority throughout the Italian peninsula, excepting the territory 
around Ravenna, the city of Rome and its environs, and the 
southern tip of the peninsula and Sicily. 


100 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


The Slavs Invade the Balkans 

At the same time the great Slav invasion of the Balkan penin¬ 
sula began and continued for at least a century. The first great 
movement came in 577, a few years after Justinian’s death, when 
a wave of at least 100,000 Slavs came down into Thrace and 
Illyria. In successive decades the Slavs pushed farther south. 
Scholars still discuss the extent to which the Greek world was 
slavized by these invaders. In other words, in what measure 
are modern Greeks descended from the stock from which 
Socrates and Plato sprang, the race which produced the Age 
of Pericles? It seems clear that the Greeks were pretty thor¬ 
oughly slavized at this time. The Peloponnesus was known as 
Slavonia in the middle ages. It is significant, too, that a Slav 
from Greece became patriarch of Constantinople in the eighth 
century. Probably the towns remained Hellenic while the rural 
areas were filled up with Slavs. 

The Eastern Empire the Bulwark of the West 

What is the importance of the Eastern Empire in the history 
of western civilization? Politically it represented a mighty 
fortress against Asiatic invasion. Alexander had delivered 
Europe from the fear of such aggression for hundreds of years. 
The rise of Roman power in the West and its extension through 
the East had continued this work of Alexander for further cen¬ 
turies. However, Rome faltered in the fourth century a.d., 
as we have seen, and the Huns broke through the cordon with 
disastrous consequences. But the Eastern Empire soon rallied 
to the task and for a thousand years after the collapse of Roman 
power in the West it stood as a bulwark between Europe and 
the successive attacks of Persians, Arabs, and Turks. The rise 
to power in the East of the Ottoman Turks, about the middle 
of the fourteenth century, sealed the fate of the Eastern Empire. 
But even so Constantinople, the citadel of the East, held out 
for sixty years after the Turks had occupied most of the Balkan 
peninsula. Surrounded on every side, it yielded finally in 1453. 
Constantinople’s resistance had helped to keep Turkish ex¬ 
pansion in Europe within bounds. 


THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST 


101 


Contributions to Western Civilization 

But the praiseworthy role of defender of the West is not the 
whole nor even the most important part of the service of the 
Eastern Empire to Europe. It had an active role as a civilizing 
agency as important as any in the history of western civilization. 
First, the Eastern Empire was the civilizer of the Slavs, that is, of 
the eastern and southern Slavs. The adherence of these peoples 
to the Greek Catholic church, whose ecclesiastical capital was 
Constantinople, is an evidence of their cultural connections. 

Scarcely less important was the influence of the civilization 
of the Eastern Empire upon the peoples of western Europe. 
We must bear in mind that from the fifth to the eleventh cen¬ 
turies Byzantine civilization was really the only Christian civili¬ 
zation in Europe. The Europe of the middle ages had been com¬ 
pared with America at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 
The northwest and west of Europe was the Mississippi Valley. 
Living conditions were primitive, educational standards low or 
lacking; there was little culture. Italy and southern Europe 
were the Atlantic seaboard, only much older and more cultured. 
Constantinople and the East was the “mother country”, the 
seat of an older civilization, with much higher standards of 
culture. To complete the parallel, the breakdown of the com¬ 
munication system of the Roman Empire in the fall of Rome 
had made intercourse between the East and the West of Europe 
almost as slow and difficult as if the Atlantic Ocean had been 
interposed as a barrier between them. 

It will be well to form some estimate of the nature of the 
civilization of the Eastern Empire during the middle ages. We 
westerners are handicapped in forming a just estimate of this 
civilization because all our source materials, until recently, have 
been the writings of western merchants, ecclesiastics, or schol¬ 
ars too prejudiced or too ignorant to give us adequate accounts. 
The broad outlines are now clear, however. Byzantine civi¬ 
lization was a composite of many elements, Hellenic, Christian, 
and Oriental. The educated man in the East had his mind 
steeped in Greek literature. He could quote from the classics 
of Greek poetry and drama. He was familiar with the scien- 


102 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


tific knowledge and the philosophic concepts of Plato and 
Aristotle. 

It is well to recognize that such a dominance of men’s minds 
by the writers of the past usually stifles the creative impulse. 
It was so here. The sole important creative work of Byzantine 
men of letters in the middle ages was historical literature. 
As preservers and transmitters of the heritage of classical Greek 
literature, however, these eastern scholars of the middle ages 
deserve well of mankind. For centuries the West was too 
immature intellectually and too far removed physically to make 
any but the most trifling use of this material, though here and 
there throughout the middle ages a western scholar, following 
the example of Boethius, triumphed over the intellectual and 
physical barriers. After the lapse of centuries, however, the 
West came to fuller maturity. It “discovered” this precious 
Hellenic heritage at the so-called Renascence, and during the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries made a religion of it. 

The Justinian Code 

One preserving and conserving work of the East of enormous 
importance to the West was the codification of Roman law. 
We have seen how the law for the Roman citizen and the law 
for the non-citizen had been fused in 176 b.c., symbolic of 
Rome’s expansion into an empire. From 176 b.c. to the fall 
of Rome is more than six centuries, however, a period during 
which the ordinary political, economic, and even the religious 
life of Rome was transformed, in some cases repeatedly. “Law is 
that which men have found to be convenient, expedient, adapted 
to the circumstances of the actual world,” says Woodrow 
Wilson. The Roman genius, it will be remembered, was prac¬ 
tical, and Roman law followed closely in the footsteps of change. 

For the formulation of this law which men in successive gen¬ 
erations found to be more “convenient” and more “expedient” 
there had been two principal agencies. First, the laws issued by 
the emperors. An imperial law was known as a constitutio 
or “constitution”. Through five centuries imperial constitu¬ 
tions had been issued, in large part haphazardly and without 
regard to fixed principles or to precedents. They were contra- 


THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST 


103 


dictory, overlapping, and above all very numerous. The second 
agency or source through which Roman law was formulated 
was the opinions of authorized jurists. Augustus had initiated 
the custom of giving to certain eminent jurists the authority to 
hand down legal opinions in answer to questions. These legal 
opinions were given the force of law. Through the centuries 
this custom persisted. A stream of legal opinions and interpreta¬ 
tions poured forth. These dicta represented the creative thought 
of some of the greatest legal minds in the world’s history. The 
hundred-year period between 150 and 250 a.d. is perhaps the 
great age of these jurists and includes the writings of Gaius, 
Papinian, and Ulpian. As in the case of the imperial constitu¬ 
tions, however, there was much in the interpretations of the 
jurists that was contradictory, much that overlapped, and above 
all they were very numerous. It was doubtful whether any one 
mind could know all the various constitutions and interpreta¬ 
tions. No one person was rich enough to own all the thousands 
of volumes. It is even doubtful whether any one library ever 
included them all. 

In the face of these facts, responsive to the preserving and 
conserving temper of his age and expressive also of his own 
organizing instinct, Justinian appointed a committee of ten ju¬ 
rists to attack the problem of the imperial constitutions. This 
committee undertook to examine all the imperial constitutions, 
to discard all obsolete ones, and to retain only those of practical 
value. It pursued its labors through fourteen months, and sum¬ 
marized the constitutions retained in a single volume. This 
volume, in 529 a.d., was made a law by imperial edict, thus 
canceling all other constitutions not so included. It is called 
Codex Constitutionum or “The Code.” 

Another commission of sixteen eminent jurists was appointed 
to survey and coordinate the vast mass of juristic literature. 
Contradictory and obsolete interpretations were eliminated and 
others were condensed. All the interpretations which were re¬ 
tained were then arranged in a single volume called Digesti or 
Pandedse , a book known to us as “The Digest.” Thirty-nine 
different jurists were quoted. Fully one-third of the interpre¬ 
tations included in the Digest were the work of a single jurist, 


104 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Ulpian. One of Justinian’s appointees, Tribonian, had been a 
member of both commissions, and chairman of the second. He 
decided to write a textbook for beginners in the study of the 
law, modeling it on an earlier textbook written by Gaius which 
had been used in the law classes of the Roman Empire for three 
hundred years. Tribonian’s textbook, like that of Gaius, was 
called Institutes. 

In these three vehicles, the Code, the Digest, and the Institutes, 
Roman law was transmitted to the western world. Justinian 
himself established a law school in the West at Ravenna. Later 
in the middle ages the neighboring city of Bologna became the 
seat of the most famous law school in western Europe. We shall 
have occasion to notice the profound educative influence of 
this study of the law. The special influence of Roman law on 
the law of the church, on the development of the absolute mon¬ 
archy, and on the theory of Divine Right, we shall also have 
occasion to notice in due time. Manuscript copies of the three 
volumes were very highly prized in the West. In the thirteenth 
century, when the city-state of Florence captured Pisa, the 
most highly prized treasure brought home by the Florentines 
from the sack of the rival city was a copy of the Digest. 

Byzantine Art 

Another sphere of Byzantine influence on the West was art. 
Here it is sacred art in the city of Constantinople which con¬ 
cerns us most. This city was the Paris of the middle ages, 
famous throughout the known world. Commercial travelers 
from the West came, saw, marveled, and returned to spread 
the fame of Constantinople in their home towns. In the course 
of the seventh and eighth centuries the Vikings “put a girdle 
around Europe in their search for El Dorado, the city whose 
streets were paved with gold.” A few centuries later it was the 
Trouveres of southern France who celebrated the marvels of 
the city, the Great Palace, the Hippodrome, and St. Sophia. 
All in all, there was a very large mediaeval literature of travel 
centering round Constantinople. 

The glory of the city, doubtless, was St. Sophia, “the fairest 
church in all the world.” It was built by Justinian. Its central 


THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST 


105 


architectural feature was the dome, 107 feet in diameter, which 
rested on four great arches supported in turn by four colossal 
piers. To at least one mediaeval observer it seemed that the 
dome was “suspended by a gold chain from heaven.” The 
interior of the church was lavishly decorated. Colored marble 
sheathed the walls. The dome, half-domes, and cylindrical 
vaults were covered with mosaics which depicted, against a 
background of dark blue and gold, scenes from the early history 
of Christianity. The myriads of bits of glass caught and re¬ 
flected the light, making the interior wonderfully luminous. 
The total effect of the interior, as of Byzantine art generally, 
was one of “jewelled iridescence”, of “stupendous luxury and 
prodigal splendor.” The pageantry of the Greek Catholic 
service lent itself perfectly to this setting, with the gorgeous 
vestments of the clergy, the clouds of incense, the dazzling 
light from hundreds of candles, the sonorous notes of the male 
chorus, and the thundering notes of the organ. The decorative 
arts of sculpture, of wood carving, and of metal work lavished 
their choicest products upon St. Sophia and the other churches 
of Constantinople. These were copied widely in the West. In 
the history of modern art in western Europe Byzantine art is 
the first chapter. 

Hostility between East and West 

The contributions of the Eastern Empire to western civiliza¬ 
tion, then, are of great importance. But the above paragraphs 
in which this influence has been summed up represent an as¬ 
similative process that consumed the thousand years from the 
fall of Rome to the Renascence. Why was this assimilative 
process so incredibly slow? We may point to the intellectual 
immaturity of the West, but this is scarcely a sufficient ex¬ 
planation. Had contact with eastern culture been close, sym¬ 
pathetic, and continuous, there can be no doubt that the West 
would have matured more rapidly. But contact was neither 
close nor continuous nor sympathetic. The attitude of the 
Eastern Empire toward the West might be described as “in¬ 
difference tempered by uneasiness”. Indifference, because the 
Eastern Empire faced eastward. All its trade routes, most of 


106 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


its cultural contacts, most of its enemies, even, were in the East. 
Constantinople made no attempt to build up a market in the 
West by any of the devices of modern super-salesmen. The 
West had to come after the goods of the East in its own ships. 
The Venetian merchants were the first to do so, making a be¬ 
ginning as early as the eighth century, but for a long time their 
eastern trade remained in its barest beginnings. The uneasiness 
of the Eastern Empire with reference to the West was derived 
from its fear of attack. This was by no means an unfounded 
fear, and it was particularly keen during the two centuries of 
the Crusades. The march of crusading armies through the 
territory of the Eastern Empire was regarded by the East as 
a renewal of the invasions of the barbarians. The sack of Con¬ 
stantinople in 1204 by a mixed group of western warriors would 
tend to support this view, since it was probably the most de¬ 
structive assault which any European city suffered during the 
whole period of the middle ages. 

But long before the period of the Crusades the uneasiness 
of the East had developed into the more active mood of open 
hostility. The issue upon which East and West first broke was 
religion, or rather theology. A schism between the Greek church 
of the East and the Roman church of the West was, perhaps, 
inevitable. They spoke different languages, figuratively as well 
as actually. The patriarch of Constantinople and the bishop 
of Rome each claimed primacy over the other. Theological 
differences had developed early A favorite controversy had to 
do with the nature and attributes of Christ, as we have seen. 
Was Christ fully man as well as fully God? Doctrinal disputa¬ 
tion was the popular pastime in the East. Even artisans and 
slaves talked in theological terms. “If you asked a man to 
judge a piece of silver, he informs you wherein the Son differs 
from the Father . . . and if you inquire whether the bath is 
ready, the answer is, the Son was made out of nothing. ,, The 
West held steadily to what is now accounted the orthodox 
position in these disputes. 

In the eighth century came the dispute between East and 
West over images—the iconoclastic controversy. Christian 
churches, both east and west, were full of images, of Christ, 


THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST 


107 


of the Virgin Mary, and of the saints, in sculpture, mosaic, and 
painting. There arose in the East a faction opposed to the use 
of images. Perhaps close contact with Mohammedans and Jews, 
who seem to have regarded the Christians as idol worshipers, 
led to a reaction against the use of images. Most of the oppo¬ 
nents of images were from the upper classes, and the emperor, 
Leo III (717-740), was their leader. A perfect orgy of image- 
smashing was indulged in. The masses were violently opposed 
to the destruction of images. They were led by the patriarch, 
who was treated by the emperor in the most dastardly fashion, 
his dismembered corpse being shamefully exposed after the 
execution. In the West the bishop of Rome took up a position 
in opposition to the iconoclasts, that is, in defense of images 
(732). For political support the pope sought the alliance of 
the kingdom of the Franks, fast coming into power in the West. 
This is very significant, for hereby the West renounced for¬ 
ever the suzerainty of the East. It was the West’s declaration of 
self-sufficiency and independence. The final schism between the 
two churches occurred in 1054. 


For Further Reading 

J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages , 
chaps. 6 and 14 

Cambridge Mediaeval History, IV, chaps. 1 to 9, 22 to 24 

James Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, chap. 16 

A. A. Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire 

C. Diehl, History of the Byzantine Empire 

J. B. Bury, A History of the Later Roman Empire 

Edward Gibbon, Beeline and Fall of the Roman Empire 

F. Schevill, A History of the Balkan Peninsula 

N. H. Baynes, Byzantine Empire 

C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, vol. II 


CHAPTER NINE 


THE EARLY CHRISTIAN FATHERS; MONASTICISM; 

THE PAPACY 

The Place of the Church in Mediaeval History 

Justinian’s attempt to rebuild the Roman Empire in the 
West failed. The Roman state as the preserver of law and order 
and as the vehicle of civilization in the West had finally disap¬ 
peared. But scarcely had the sceptre of leadership fallen from 
Rome’s grasp when another institution seized it—the church. 
For some centuries the church, with the bishop of Rome at its 
head, was to be the vehicle of civilization, the stream in whose 
current the seeds of culture were carried in solution. The church 
was to bring to the West at least a semblance of unity and, 
though this is anomalous to the modern mind, the church was 
destined for a time to wield some of Rome’s imperial authority. 
At the high point of its power under Pope Innocent III, as we 
shall see, the church answered every definition of a state and 
exercised an authority in taxing, in commanding, and as a 
law giver to the West scarcely to be distinguished in charac¬ 
ter or extent from that of ancient Rome. “The history of 
mankind may be vainly searched,” says Lea, “for another 
institution . . . such as that of the Latin Church which 
has exercised so vast an influence on human destinies.” 1 

We must first try to understand the development of the 
church as a spiritual agency, always its principal function and 
now, since the rise of modern nation-states, its sole function. 
We have already seen how Christianity became the sole legal 
religion of the Roman Empire, toward the end of the fourth 
century. Fostered and encouraged by the state, was the Chris¬ 
tian religion destined to become merely the tool of the state, 
a fresh vehicle of its authority? Such had been, in the main, 

1 Confession and Indulgence, I, Preface. Quoted by J. W. Thompson, 
Reference Studies in Mediaeval History, pt. I, p. xxii. 

108 


CHRISTIAN FATHERS; MONASTICISM; THE PAPACY 109 


the role of other religions. To put the matter in a different 
way, what part would the church play in the life of man? To 
the answer to this question some of the foremost intellects of 
the age addressed themselves during the fourth and fifth cen¬ 
turies. 

These thinkers are known as the Fathers; we speak in much 
the same way of the men who laid the foundations of the 
American government and sketched the part it was to play in 
American life as “Fathers of the Constitution.” There are at 
least half a dozen of these Fathers of the Christian church. 
Athanasius (d. 373), Gregory Nazianzus (d. 389), and Chrysos¬ 
tom (d. 487), were Greek Fathers. For them the problem of 
the soul’s salvation was the most important problem in human 
life. This life was of little moment; it was a dream from which 
we wake at death to real life. Thus, the interest of the Greek 
Fathers was almost entirely theological. They concerned them¬ 
selves extremely little, even indirectly, with political questions. 
It will be remembered that in the Eastern Empire the state 
was still all-powerful, regulating the whole of practical life. 

The Latin Fathers 

Three of the greatest of the western Fathers were Ambrose 
(d. 397), Jerome (d. 420), and Augustine (d. 430). They were 
at one with the Greek Fathers in deeming the soul’s salvation 
man’s most important problem. But they were of a practical 
turn of mind. The Latin Fathers were the successors of Roman 
jurists and pro-consuls, as the Greek Fathers were of Hellenic 
philosophers. The interest of the Latin Fathers in the prac¬ 
tical side of their problem was thus due in part to their Roman 
inheritance. But it was also due to stern necessity, for govern¬ 
ment in the West was breaking up under their eyes. Society 
was disintegrating and men were seeking protection wherever 
they could find it. To this need the Christian bishops of the 
West could not fail to respond. 

In Ambrose of Milan we have an example of the Christian 
bishop as a man of action. He had been trained in the law and 
became a consular prefect. Entering the church, he was chosen 
archbishop of Milan at the age of thirty-four. Ambrose s tenure 


110 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


of office fell in a very troubled period, and his fame rests largely 
on his skill as the administrator of his diocese. He displayed 
the old Roman qualities of power of command, courage, and 
political sagacity. In the midst of his exhausting practical labors, 
however, Ambrose did not forget in his sermons and writings 
to urge his generation to turn their minds to the other world 
and to the best means of ensuring a welcome there. The prob¬ 
lems of this life must be faced, but they are as dust in the 
balance in comparison with the problem of salvation. The 
whole scientific attitude of the Greeks and Romans toward the 
natural world, their idle curiosity concerning the earth and its 
creatures, Ambrose spurned. “To discuss the nature and posi¬ 
tion of the earth,” he says, “does not help us in our hope of 
the life to come.” Ambrose’s most famous convert, as we shall 
see, was Augustine. 

St. Jerome, the second of the three Latin Fathers whom we 
shall consider, was brought up in Rome to the life of a scholar. 
As a young man he was full of enthusiasm for pagan literature 
and was well grounded in grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and 
law. He had traveled widely both in the East and in the West. 
During a severe illness his mind was turned into a new channel, 
however, the mediaeval channel. For several years he lived as 
a hermit near Antioch. Returning to Rome, Jerome, at the sug¬ 
gestion of the bishop of Rome, undertook to revise the Latin 
translation of the Bible. He made a fresh translation of the 
Hebrew and Greek sources, chiefly in a monastery near Bethle¬ 
hem. He had some help from Jewish scholars. St. Jerome’s 
translation, known as the Vulgate, supplanted other Latin 
translations in time and it survives to this day as the author¬ 
ized version of the Roman Church. We are familiar with the 
influence of the King James’ Version on the speech and even 
on the thought and life of English-speaking people. Much 
greater was the influence of the Vulgate on the thought of the 
middle ages. Jerome’s translation abandoned the classical em¬ 
phasis upon restraint, self-control, and reasoned self-reliance. 
It struck the mediaeval note of mysticism and emotionalism. 
As chanted for centuries by mediaeval choirs, the Latin of the 
Vulgate appealed to the emotions, not to the intellect. Thus 


CHRISTIAN FATHERS; MONASTICISM; THE PAPACY 111 


the Vulgate became one of the principal channels through which 
ancient life was transformed into mediaeval. 

St. Augustine 

Incomparably the greatest of the Latin Fathers, however, was 
Augustine. With his death the mediaeval history of Christianity 
may be said to begin. He was born in a small town in northern 
Africa, in a province now called Tunisia. He was educated for 
the profession of rhetoric and followed his study and his pro¬ 
fession in Carthage, Rome, and Milan. Augustine lived a more 
or less dissolute life as a young man, following the fashion of 
his time. Like others of his day, also, he dallied with many 
religious beliefs, including one or more Christian heresies, but 
without becoming an enthusiastic adherent of any. Meanwhile 
the young man was struggling with the evil of his own life and 
this struggle came to a crisis during his stay in Milan. In the 
conversion of Augustine the influence of bishop Ambrose was 
important, but the influence of Augustine’s devout Christian 
mother was more important. The new convert faced about. 
He returned to his native town in the year 388 and became the 
leader of a small semi-monastic community there. A few years 
later he became bishop of Hippo, a town on the coast of northern 
Africa. Here he remained until his death in 430, fulfilling the 
duties of his office and making in his writings the most impor¬ 
tant contribution made by any one man to the foundation of 
the mediaeval church. A flood of treatises flowed from his pen 
combating the many heresies prevalent at the time, among them 
Manicheism. St. Augustine also wrote two important books, 
“The City of God” and the “Confessions.” 

Fundamentally, all of Augustine’s writings bear on the same 
point. The most important problem in human life is the at¬ 
tainment of eternal life and the avoidance of eternal death. 
All human knowledge and intellectual interests get their mean¬ 
ing and importance as they subserve this end, and only so. 
Sternly Augustine rejected those elements of Greek and Roman 
culture which did not, in his opinion, contribute to the solution 
of this great problem. But how attain eternal life? By following 
the precepts of the Catholic religion, replies Augustine, and he 


112 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


proceeds to explain in detail. Only God of his own free will and 
grace can save a man. Evil was introduced into the world by 
Adam; thus did Augustine combat the Manichean view that 
evil was co-eternal with good and came from Satan. Further, 
“in Adam’s fall we sinned all.” The new-born babe brings the 
taint of original sin into the world with it. “By this original 
corruption man is utterly indisposed, disabled, and made op¬ 
posite to good and wholly inclined to all evil. He is no longer 
able even to will to do good works unless he be helped by God’s 
grace.” This statement of Augustine’s dogma of original sin 
made by John Calvin more than a thousand years later will 
illustrate, incidentally, the far-reaching influence of Augustine. 
Those whom God chooses to save are the elect. But how many 
are elect? Augustine felt that there were few. Here we see one 
of the most important of the mental attitudes of the mediaeval 
man, a feeling of pessimism about this life. 

In “The City of God” we see Augustine’s philosophy of history. 
Rome had been sacked by the Goths under Alaric in 410 a.d. 
To many pagan thinkers this represented a judgment of the 
gods against the Romans who had abandoned the gods under 
whom Rome had grown great. Augustine sprang to the defense 
of Christianity in the face of this attack. There are two cities 
or societies in the world, he says, a society of the elect and 
a society of those not elect, the city of God and the city of 
Satan. The Rome which Alaric had sacked represented the 
latter. Unremitting, unrelenting warfare between the two so¬ 
cieties is the story which we call history. The city of the elect 
is the only real city. It is the duty of all other institutions, in¬ 
cluding the secular state, to support the City of God, Augustine 
announced. “Both higher soul and better laws came from the 
Church. The State should be servant to the Church; civic and 
municipal institutions, commerce, industry, in short every 
human energy, physical and moral, found in service through 
the Church, as the guiding influence and authority, its means 
of service to humanity. Service to society could only be through 
service to God, whose divine instrument the Church was.” 1 
Here again we come upon a fundamental matter, namely, the 

1 Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, p. 78. 


CHRISTIAN FATHERS; MONASTICISM; THE PAPACY 113 


theory of the relation between church and state that filled the 
minds of men in the middle ages. 

Thus did Augustine outline the theology and the political 
science of the middle ages. He moved the minds that moved 
the world, as was later said of Bacon. Augustine’s “Confessions” 
is an autobiography, a human document of great frankness but 
of no less great sincerity. It shows how one who “had been in 
the torrent of life and had not merely watched it from the 
shore” at last found the way of salvation. It has become a 
classic, worthy of a place on any man’s bookshelf, however 
short. Augustine’s conclusion of the whole matter may be ex¬ 
pressed in his own words: “Oh God, thou hast made us for 
ourselves and our souls are restless until they find their rest in 
thee. Amen.” 


Okigin of Monasticism 

The ascetic ideal, as expressed in the spread of the monastic 
way of life, was growing in importance in the fourth and fifth 
centuries. Seized upon by the instinct of the West, the monastic 
way of life developed into an institution which ranks next to the 
papacy itself in influence and importance in the history of the 
western church. The ascetic impulse is an aspect of human 
nature everywhere, and in all ages. All of us know individuals 
who are unusually stern with themselves, very sparing in their 
indulgence of physical appetite, delighting in physical hardship, 
exercising “great particularity of conduct.” Couple this impulse 
with the religious motive and you have the basic elements of 
religious asceticism. 

Historically, religious asceticism is more oriental than western. 
Gautama Buddha designated monasticism as the only perfect 
way of life. “All is transitory, all is misery, all is void, all is 
without substance,” he says. There are thousands of Buddhist 
monks and nuns, to-day, living under monastic vows. Zoroaster, 
founder of the religion in Persia which bears his name, c. 600 
b.c., proclaimed the eternal war of Good and Evil. It is the 
duty of man to withdraw from the physical world and from 
human society as far as possible and to magnify the life of the 
soul, he taught. There was a similar school of thought among 


114 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the Greeks, borrowed in large part from the Orient, called 
Gnosticism. The early Christians were frequently taken to 
be exponents of a new form of the religious asceticism already 
familiar. Christ advised the rich young ruler to sell all and give 
his goods to the poor for the benefit of his soul. “Ye are not 
of this world,” He said. We recognize that this is not the only 
and not even the principal element of Christian teaching, but 
it is one element, and as such was greatly over-emphasized by 
some of the early adherents of Christianity. Moreover, the 
more ascetic elements of Christ’s teaching were given practical 
expression in the life of some of the early Christian communities. 
The early Christians were very poor and they frequently shared 
their goods in common. They tended to keep clear of the wicked 
world around them, the world of politics, war, and licentious 
amusements. 

Probably the first monastic communities appeared in Egypt, 
where climatic conditions are favorable to that mode of life. 
The tradition which assigns the actual beginning of Christian 
monasticism to the persecution of Christians under the em¬ 
peror Decius in 251 a.d. may be substantially true. However 
that may be, there is general agreement that the first great 
growth of Christian monasticism followed quickly upon the 
victory of Christianity over paganism in the fourth century. 
When the Christian religion became a recognized religion and 
still more when it became the only religion in the Empire, 
thousands of adherents flocked to it whose standards of life 
were by no means those of the early Christians. “The ap¬ 
parent triumph of Christianity was in some sense and for a 
time at least its defeat, the corruption of its simplicity, the 
defacement of its purest and loftiest beauty.” (Farrar.) The 
church was no longer a community of saints but was more 
like a school for sinners. Furthermore, martyrdom was no 
longer a possibility so enthusiasts had to turn to self-immolation. 
There came in the East a vogue of pillar saints like St. Simeon 
Stylites, in imitation of pagan ascetics. 

The spread of monasticism in the East was sporadic at first. 
Little organization was needed because of the favoring climate. 
Extravagances and excess soon led to the formulation of rules, 


CHRISTIAN FATHERS; MONASTICISM; THE PAPACY 115 


however, the most important of which was that of Basil the 
Great (d. 379). Imperial edicts supplemented the regulations 
of the monks themselves. There is much evidence in the im¬ 
perial laws of the abuse of the monastic privilege. Some men 
joined monastic groups to escape service in the army, others 
to escape the burden of debt or to shake off family obligations. 
There is evidence, too, that runaway slaves and escaped crim¬ 
inals sought refuge in monastic ranks. The emperor Justinian, 
characteristically, decided to codify the various monastic laws 
and customs, and the rule known as Basil's Rule was the result. 
At the death of Justinian it was estimated that there were ninety 
monasteries in the Empire. 

In the West monasticism appeared only a little later than it 
did in the East. There also it grew sporadically at first. In¬ 
dividuals or even small groups of persons might decide to live 
a purer and stricter life by withdrawal from the world and by 
devoting themselves to meditation and exercises in self-control. 
Noble Roman families sometimes converted their palaces into 
monasteries. We have already noted the examples of St. Jerome 
and St. Augustine. In Gaul monasticism was first made popular 
by the patron saint of France, St. Martin of Tours (d. 396). 
Along the river Loire near Tours monks “burrowed cells for 
themselves in the chalk faces of the cliff and became as thick 
as swallows in a clay bank.” 1 

It is interesting to observe that periods of rapid growth of 
monasticism in the West correspond to periods of economic and 
social disturbance. In the sixth century the twenty years of 
Justinian's wars with the East Goths (535-555) saw the rush 
of thousands to join the monasteries. To men driven from their 
homes and faced with starvation the monasteries were the one 
institution of the time offering a shelter. In Gaul a similarly 
rapid growth of monasteries came during the civil wars of the 
Franks in the seventh century. 

From the first, western monasticism differed from eastern, 
reflecting the fundamental divergence in attitude of mind be¬ 
tween East and West. While eastern monks remained con¬ 
templative and inactive, full of idle day-dreaming or periods 

1 Thompson, op. cit., p. 142. 


116 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


of wild excess, western monasticism was active, efficient, and 
sane. Western monasticism, in fact, was one of the most impor¬ 
tant civilizing agencies of the middle ages. 

St. Benedict and His “Rule” 

A very important factor in the institutionalizing of the 
monastic impulse in the West was St. Benedict’s Rule. St. 
Benedict was an Italian of noble family, born in Spoleto in 
480. He became a monk at the age of fourteen and settled at 
Subiaco, forty miles south of Rome. There a little group of 
monks gathered around him, attracted by his reputation. St. 
Benedict’s organizing instincts were aroused. He induced the 
monks to form small colonies. As these grew in size St. Benedict 
felt it necessary to migrate to a more favorable spot and, in 
529 a.d., he founded the famous monastery of Monte Cassino, 
where he became the first of a long line of abbots which has not 
yet ended. At Monte Cassino St. Benedict worked out his 
famous Rule. This is believed to have been a very simple affair 
originally, with later elaborations. The principal additions were 
borrowings from the most practical elements of the rule of St. 
Basil or from a rule formulated by the famous Irish monk St. 
Columban, and the lessons of practical experience. 

As it has come down to us, then, St. Benedict’s Rule is really 
a code. It provides for a novitiate of one year, at the end of 
which the novice might depart without prejudice and resume 
his ordinary way of life. If the candidate remained and took 
the vows his decision was irrevocable. A central feature of the 
Rule was the duty of absolute obedience to the abbot. The 
monks were to have no will of their own. However, the abbot 
was obliged to consult the whole chapter about important 
matters, and he was not infrequently elected by the monks. 
The Rule has specific regulations about fasting, food and drink, 
clothing, property, and so on, in great detail. St. Benedict evi¬ 
dently had in mind the life of the peasant in southern Italy, 
so that in many details his rule required modification in more 
northerly climates. 

But by far the most important feature of the Rule was the 
duty of labor, with heavy emphasis on manual toil, the toil of 


CHRISTIAN FATHERS; MONASTICISM; THE PAPACY 117 

the peasant. St. Benedict required six or seven hours of manual 
labor daily, as an obligation imposed by God Himself. “Idle¬ 
ness is the enemy of the soul,” the Rule reads, and work was 
required as a chief means of saving the soul. So familiar a 
characteristic did this become that the men of the middle ages 
called the monks “ workers” (monachi labor antes). St. Columban 
was even more insistent than St. Benedict upon the duty of 
labor. “Let them work until they are exhausted,” he says. 
“Let them go to their repose broken with weariness and sleep 
upon their feet.” A great authority on economic history, Cun¬ 
ningham, says, “The chief claim of the monks to our gratitude 
lies in this, that they helped to diffuse a better appreciation of 
the beauty and dignity of labor.” 

The Monks as Agricultural Pioneers 

Through the spread of this Rule of St. Benedict Monte 
Cassino became the mother of hundreds of other monasteries 
in Italy, Spain, Gaul, Britain, and Germany. Each monastery 
was designedly a self-sufficing agricultural community and a 
kind of model farm. As a consequence the monks became the 
agricultural colonizers of western Europe. A very large propor¬ 
tion of the soil of Europe in the middle ages was waste land. 
Much of it was marsh, especially in Ireland, the east of England, 
the Low Countries, southeastern Gaul, and in Lombardy. 
Then, too, there were vast tracts of moorland covered with 
brushwood or furze or heather, especially in Scotland, England, 
central France, and in parts of Switzerland, Germany, and 
central Italy. There were also vast stretches of forest in western 
Europe. One-third of England was covered with forests, of oak 
and beech especially. Sherwood Forest of romantic fame is 
but an attenuated remnant of the great forests of England in 
the early middle ages. It is estimated that two-thirds of France 
was covered with forests as late as the time of Charlemagne. 
Central Germany was all forest land. From these great forests 
of Europe bands of wolves issued to attack the surrounding 
villages as late as the ninth century. The monasteries set 
themselves the task of bringing the soil under cultivation by 
draining the swamps, clearing the moorland, and cutting down 


118 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the forests. Columban, the Irish saint, was always accom¬ 
panied by a band of wood-choppers. St. Theodulf, in the north 
of France, was a plowman, and the plow he drove for twenty- 
two years was preserved after his death as a holy relic. The 
English St. Dunstan’s anvil was similarly venerated. The 
pioneering work of the monastic communities naturally at¬ 
tracted settlements of peasants around them, for the shadow of 
the monastery offered security. Thus vast areas were reclaimed 
for agricultural purposes. 

Moreover, the agricultural methods of the monks were copied 
by the peasants. Improved breeds of cattle were developed by 
the monastic communities and some improvement was made 
by them in cereals also, through careful selection of seeds. 
Glastonbury Abbey was founded in the midst of a great marsh 
which, in the course of centuries, became one of the most fertile 
areas of England. The monks of Ely raised their monastic build¬ 
ings on an island surrounded by marshes. This Fenland in 
the east of England is now a land of fertile farms. 

Monasteries as Centers of Civilization 

And not only was each monastery a model farm reclaiming 
land and serving as a local school of agriculture by precept 
and by example but it was also a center of civilization in other 
ways. From the beginning the monks devoted much atten¬ 
tion to the relief of the poor and the care of the sick. They also 
took upon themselves the duty of hospitality to travelers in 
days when there were no other hostels. The part played by 
the monasteries as the preservers of learning was also important. 
Following the example set by Cassiodorus, each monastery had 
a scriptorium in which some of the monks busied themselves 
copying manuscripts. They were thus the mediaeval publish¬ 
ing houses. A carefully kept calendar was essential in the monas¬ 
tic community if they were to keep in touch with the numerous 
saints’ days and other feast days of the mediaeval church. The 
keeper of the calendar not infrequently jotted down in the 
margin of his manuscript happenings of interest in the neigh¬ 
borhood or, as he learned of them through chance travelers, 
in the world at large. 


CHRISTIAN FATHERS; MONASTICISM; THE PAPACY 119 


Origin of the Papacy 

Having considered the part played in the history of the church 
by the Fathers and the monks, we may now turn to the part 
played by the popes. During the middle ages, as we shall see, 
the papacy wielded an authority and claimed a supremacy which 
was at once spiritual and political. The mediaeval mind seldom 
paused to distinguish between the two. The line of division 
between them is even now not precise. Yet the modern mind 
does attempt to distinguish between them and so it will be 
convenient, as we take up the study of this problem, to deal 
with the early development of the spiritual and of the political 
authority of the papacy separately. 

The view of Catholic scholars is that from the beginning, 
by divine ordinance, the see of Rome was preeminent in spir¬ 
itual authority. The view of Protestant scholars is that, in the 
beginning, Rome was only one of a number of patriarchates, 
such as Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Constantinople, 
each more or less equal with the others in dignity and authority. 
Among these Constantinople claimed preeminence over the 
rest because of her political prestige as the capital. But Rome, 
also, claimed preeminence over the others because she was 
founded by St. Peter and had been the scene of the martyrdom 
of St. Paul. Bishop Leo the Great of Rome (440-461) argued 
that apostolic succession gave greater claim to authority over 
the whole church than did political preeminence. In the West 
Rome’s claims to ascendancy were never successfully contra¬ 
dicted. No other city rivaled her in prestige. Her geographic 
position was central; all roads led to Rome. Her bishops were 
famous for their orthodoxy through the generations of con¬ 
troversy over theological questions. The Petrine doctrine, 
however Protestant scholars may question it to-day, was gen¬ 
erally accepted in that day and worked powerfully to establish 
the claim of the bishop of Rome. 

Moreover, the successive bishops of Rome had been at pains 
to extend their authority through the West by strenuously pro¬ 
moting missionary enterprises. In this way the entire West 
was brought under Rome’s sway, either by conversion from the 


120 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Arian heresy, as in the case of the Burgundians and the Goths, or 
by conversion directly from paganism, as in the case of Franks, 
Anglo-Saxons, and Saxons. By the end of the sixth century, 
as is agreed by Protestant and Catholic scholars alike, the claims 
of the bishop of Rome to spiritual supremacy in the West were 
no longer disputed. In the end, however, the claims of the 
bishop of Rome to spiritual supremacy in the East were re¬ 
sisted; and in the middle of the eighth century, as we have 
seen, the breach between the two Catholic churches, Roman and 
Greek, was final. 

The Beginnings of Political Powek 

Along with the extension of the spiritual authority of the 
bishops of Rome went the development of their political power. 
It should be borne in mind that under the Roman emperor 
every bishop was a magistrate, an official in the civil govern¬ 
ment, judging, taxing, and commanding, subject always, of 
course, to the supreme authority of the emperor. In the city 
of Rome, therefore, the bishop was an important municipal 
official from the beginning. A different source of the political 
authority of the bishops of Rome lay in their ownership of land. 
During the later Roman Empire political authority more and 
more fell into the hands of the great landlords, as we have seen. 
Within their vast domains they became practically sovereign. 
During the early Christian centuries gifts of the faithful had 
poured in upon the bishops of Rome in a flood. Several of the 
popes had been wealthy men also, and had left their property 
to the see of St. Peter. 

It has been estimated that by 600 a.d. the papacy owned 
lands in and about Rome to the extent of forty square miles, 
and that other landed possessions of the see throughout the 
Italian peninsula and in the adjacent islands amounted to 1800 
square miles. During the sixth century, moreover, after the 
invasion of the Lombards had broken forever the authority of 
the eastern emperor, the bishop of Rome, by virtue of his 
position as spiritual leader and as landlord, stood forth as the 
most important political personage in the Italian peninsula. 
In the city of Rome he remained the sole political authority. 


CHRISTIAN FATHERS; MONASTICISM; THE PAPACY 121 


“He ordered the police, regulated markets, coined money, 
maintained civil and criminal courts, repaired the walls and 
the aqueducts, supported schools and hospitals, commanded 
the militia, and defended the city in case of attack.” 1 Thus 
we see in their beginnings the “States of the Church”, ruled 
by the popes in full sovereignty, of which Vatican City, re¬ 
cently defined by treaty with Italy, is the attenuated remnant. 

Gregory the Great 

Both the spiritual and the political authority of the mediaeval 
papacy are clearly discernible in the pontificate of Gregory the 
Great (590-604), who may be called the founder of the mediaeval 
papacy. He was descended from a distinguished senatorial 
family of Rome and had been educated for a public career. At 
the age of thirty he governed the city of Rome as prefect under 
the authority of the emperor. Suddenly Gregory resigned his 
position and his wealth and became a monk. Entering the 
service of the church he spent five years at Constantinople as 
the personal representative of the pope. Returning to Rome, 
Gregory became pope himself, being the first monk to hold 
that office. As pope he was very influential in spreading monas- 
ticism and in making the monks as independent as possible of 
the authority of their local bishops. 

We may notice, first, Gregory’s activity in extending the 
spiritual authority of the see of Rome throughout the West. 
He labored to convert the Lombards and the West Goths from 
the Arian heresy. He kept in close touch by correspondence 
with the Frankish kings already converted to orthodoxy. But 
Gregory’s most famous missionary project, and the one on 
which, we are told, he himself had wished to embark before 
becoming pope, was the mission of St. Augustine to the Anglo- 
Saxons of Britain. The landing of that famous missionary 
with his forty associates was the return of Roman civilization 
to Britain, and Pope Gregory was extending the bounds of 
Roman culture as truly as any Roman emperor of old. 

To rule the city of Rome was an old story to Pope Gregory. 
His chief political task was the defense of Rome against the 

1 Thompson, op. cit., p. 131. 


122 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Lombards. Gregory undertook the task with courage, resource¬ 
fulness, and success. He took personal charge of the defensive 
operations, fed the starving citizens, and energetically pushed 
diplomatic negotiations with the foe, whom he twice bought 
off. Thus the papal city was a center of political activity like 
the capital of any great prince. 

Outstanding as an ecclesiastical administrator and as a re¬ 
sourceful prince, Gregory, we must also note, was a loving and 
tender pastor of his flock and has left many writings which 
give evidence of this. Moralia, his commentary on the Book of 
Job, had a great vogue in the middle ages. As a moralizer 
Gregory was eminently practical, seeking to make religion more 
lovable. He also wrote a book on pastoral care, Regula Pas - 
toralis, a sort of manual for confessors. He labored to perfect 
the ritual of the church, introducing the Gregorian chant and 
composing hymns, of which at least nine authentic ones survive. 
His writings reveal Gregory as typically mediaeval in his em¬ 
phasis on faith, in his belief in miracles and visions, in his 
repudiation of science, and in his neglect of classical literature. 


For Further Reading 

G. B. Adams, Civilization during the Middle Ages, chap. 6 

J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 
chap. 5 

H. 0. Taylor, Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages, chap. 7 
F. H. Gasquet, The Rule of St. Benedict 

A. C. Flick, Rise of the Mediaeval Church 
F. W. Farrar, Lives of the Fathers 
F. H. Dudden, Gregory the Great 
A. Harnach, Monasticism 
L. Bertrand, Saint Augustine 

H. K. Mann, Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages (13 vols.) 
Comte de Montalembert, Monks of the West (6 vols.) 

St. Augustine, Confessions. (Original text and excellent translation 
in the Loeb Classical Library) 

E. F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages. 
(For the Rule of St. Benedict see pp. 74 ff.) 


CHAPTER TEN 


THE RISE OF THE FRANKISH STATE 

In our survey of the middle ages thus far we have reached the 
beginning of the seventh century, and the West still lacked an 
institution without which civilization could not advance with 
confidence. That was a state strong enough to bring order out 
of the political chaos. It must be remembered that an ordered 
society had been lacking since the breakdown of Roman au¬ 
thority. And yet such a society was absolutely necessary if the 
peoples of the West were to assimilate Christian teaching and 
the elements of classical culture that were available. More 
than that, if civilization itself was to survive some one must 
undertake the laborious and primary work of protecting life 
and property. There were enemies of an orderly life in plenty 
and no one needed to look far to see them. When authority is 
withdrawn the baser instincts of mankind usually break out in 
full strength. The strong oppress the weak; the rich exploit 
the poor. On the more distant horizon of Christian Europe, 
moreover, there were the still numerous pagan peoples, uncon¬ 
quered and unassimilated, awaiting the first favorable oppor¬ 
tunity to plunder and destroy. The lack both of order within 
and of security from without called insistently for the establish¬ 
ment of a strong political and military power. This was the 
mission of the Franks. 

Early History of the Franks 

The early history of the Franks during the period of the 
migrations has been set forth above. A brief review of this 
history will remind us that among the Germanic peoples the 
Franks were in an exceptionally favored position. The heart 
of their lands lay in a region never conquered by Rome, where 
the German element of the population was heavily in the major¬ 
ity. Though much territory formerly held by Rome was destined 

123 


124 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


to be conquered by the Franks during their period of expansion, 
nevertheless the Roman provincials were never to become the 
dominant element in the Frankish state. Not only was the old 
homeland of the Franks retained throughout but more German 
territory was constantly added. The position of the Franks 
was, thus, an international one, joining the Germanic and the 
Roman worlds. 

We may notice this in the conquests of Clovis, the first im¬ 
portant king of the Franks (481-511). He was king of the Salian 
Franks, of the family of the Merovingians, and soon after his 
accession he embarked upon a career of conquest which con¬ 
tinued throughout his entire reign. Turning first to the south 
he defeated the Roman general Syagrius at Soissons, and so 
conquered the valley of the Seine. Next Clovis defeated the 
Visigoths and thus extended his authority through Aquitaine to 
the Pyrenees. Turning to the east he crossed the Rhone and 
defeated the king of the Burgundians, though the conquest of 
Burgundy was not completed during the lifetime of Clovis. 
By these three victories all Roman Gaul was added to the 
Frankish dominions. Meanwhile Clovis had been busy con¬ 
quering his German neighbors. Having first procured the murder 
of their king, he extended his authority over the Ripuarian 
Franks. Pushing farther up the Rhine Clovis conquered the 
Alemanni, thus securing the valley of the middle Rhine and the 
Main, a territory henceforth called Franconia. Thus, at his 
death, Clovis the Conqueror was king of all the Franks and of 
the Alemanni and master of nearly all Gaul; “and finding no 
more to kill he died.” The astonishing military vigor displayed 
by the Franks under Clovis did not die with him. Three cen¬ 
turies after his death saw the founding of the Frankish empire 
under Charlemagne, comprehending nearly all of western 
Europe. 


Conversion to Christianity 

From Clovis to Charlemagne is a long way, however, and 
the road is tortuous and full of difficulties. We have noted 
that the Frankish kingdom was distinctive among the German 
kingdoms of its day because of its international position. It 


THE RISE OF THE FRANKISH STATE 


125 


was also distinctive because of the conversion of the Franks 
directly from paganism to Roman orthodoxy, midway in the 
reign of Clovis. A very great authority (Milman) has not 
hesitated to say that “the conversion of the Franks was the 
most important event in its remote as well as its immediate 
consequences in the history of Europe.” An immediate conse¬ 
quence was, of course, the removal in large measure of the 
racial hostility between the German conquerors and the Roman 
provincials, so fatal in the other kingdoms founded by the 
Germans. Furthermore, the subject peoples of the Arian 
kingdoms, rivals of the Franks, threw their entire support on 
the Frankish side, thus making the conquest of the West Goths 
and Burgundians easier. The later consequences of the con¬ 
version of the Franks were still more important, as we shall see. 

It is certain that this conversion worked no special transforma¬ 
tion in the bloodthirsty and turbulent character of Clovis and 
his barbarian followers. As Gregory, bishop of Tours, tells the 
story, Clovis had married Clotilda, Christian princess of Bur¬ 
gundy, who urged her lord to turn from his pagan gods to her 
God. Some little while later, his soldiers giving way on the 
field of battle, Clovis called upon Christ to show his strength. 
“Clotilda says that Thou art the Son of the living God, and 
that Thou dost give victory to those that put their trust in Thee. 
I have called upon my gods but they gave me no aid. Only 
save me from the hands of my enemies and I will believe in 
Thee.” Clovis won the battle, and was baptized by St. Remigius 
at Rheims on Christmas day of 496, his subjects following 
his example. We may doubt the accuracy of the story of Clovis’s 
conversion, if we like, and thus acquit the king of the primitive 
concept of God which the quotation reveals. We cannot, how¬ 
ever, similarly acquit the good bishop, for he relates the story 
with full approval. 

Bishop Gregory goes on to recount the deeds of blood by 
which Clovis gained his conquests, including a whole series 
of foul murders, and concludes, “for God caused the king’s 
enemies to fall each day under his hand because he walked 
with an upright heart before the Lord and did that which was 
pleasing in His sight.” These words carry us back to the primi- 


126 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


tive ethics of the kings of Israel. It would seem that Christianity 
was paganized more than the pagans were Christianized in 
this conversion of the Franks. 

It seems highly probable that King Clovis’s readiness to adopt 
Christianity may have had some political motives to explain it. 
His conversion came in the midst of his conquest of Gaul. It 
will be remembered that Clovis’s conquest of Gaul falls in 
the period of the dominance of Theodoric, the great king of 
the East Goths. In a very real sense Theodoric and Clovis were 
rivals for the leadership of the western world. Clovis was a man 
of primitive ethics but he seems to have had a very considerable 
cunning, much more than would be necessary to explain his dis¬ 
covery that by professing Roman orthodoxy he would have 
the whole influence of the Roman church in the West on his 
side. 


A Century of Stagnation 

But high as was to be the destiny of the new Frankish state, 
it seemed for a century after the death of Clovis that its fate 
was to be that of the other German states we have studied. 
During that century, 511 to 613, very little expansive vigor 
was displayed and there seems to have been very little ad¬ 
vance in civilization. This century of stagnation was due in 
part to the civil wars among the successors of the great king. 
Clovis left four sons who, in accordance with Frankish law, 
divided the father’s dominions and then, in accordance with 
Frankish practice, fought among themselves. Rent asunder 
for some years, the Frankish domains were reunited for a brief 
interval under the last surviving son only to be divided afresh 
among the four sons of this last survivor! More civil wars 
ensued. These wars were carried on with a ferocity unparalleled 
in the history of western Europe. “The repulsive annals of 
this House (the Merovingians) are the most hopeless and de¬ 
pressing page in the history of Europe. From generation to 
generation their story reeks with blood; there is nothing that 
can be compared to it for horror in the records of any nation this 
side the Mediterranean.” 1 Amazing also was the ferocity and 

1 Oman, Dark Ages , p. 159. 


THE RISE OF THE FRANKISH STATE 


127 


the vitality of the women of the House of the Merovings. 
Brunhilda, for instance, maintained herself as Queen Regent for 
fifty years, chiefly by violent means, ruling in the name of her 
son, her grandson, and her great-grandson in succession. 

Truth, mercy, and chastity seem to have been unknown in 
this royal family. The ethics of the pagan religion did not sur¬ 
vive the religion itself, and the morality inculcated by Chris¬ 
tianity seems to have been unable to contend with the influence 
wrought by sudden wealth and power. Needless to say, the 
misery and hardship of the masses were intensified by the civil 
wars, however little the people as a whole might be directly 
involved in them. In this century of bloodshed and confusion 
the Christian bishops, mostly drawn from Roman families, 
were the mainstay of civilization. A leading authority thinks 
that “in the long history of the church of Rome the bishops 
have never wielded a greater power than in sixth century Gaul, 
and that power was used for the defense of civilization in a 
savage age.” 

From this century of stagnation two political results of major 
importance emerged, however. First, the successive divisions 
of the Frankish dominions perpetuated, if indeed they did not 
originate, the division of the Franks into East and West. Aus- 
trasia, or the kingdom of the East Franks, extended from 
Bavaria and Thuringia on the east and north to the Meuse; all 
solidly German territory, it will be noted. Neustria, or the 
New West kingdom, included northern Gaul from the Meuse 
southward to the Loire. In the cleavage between East Franks 
and West Franks is shadowed forth the line of demarcation 
between the German-speaking and the French-speaking peoples 
of to-day, if not indeed the boundary between Germany and 
France. 


Rise of the Carolingians 

The second political result emerging out of the sixth century 
was the rise of a new family to power, a family destined to dis¬ 
place the decadent Merovingians and to provide the intelligent 
and powerful leadership which brought the Frankish state to its 
zenith. The Merovingian kings of the later decades of the sixth 


128 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


century usually died young. The transaction of public business, 
the judging, taxing, and commanding, devolved more and more 
upon an officer of the royal household known as the major 
domus or mayor of the palace. This office can be traced back 
to the official whose duties were to control the peasant popu¬ 
lation of a Roman estate, and the duties of the major domus 
of the Frankish kings lay in the field of estate management 
originally. Then public business began to pass into the hands 
of the mayors of the palace. This began gradually but increased 
rapidly as the mayors waxed stronger and the kings weaker. 
The Merovingian kings of this period are known as rois faineants 
or “do-nothing” kings. 

In the year 613 the century of stagnation came to an end. 
Pepin of Landers, a powerful landlord of Austrasia, became 
mayor of the palace in Austrasia and made the office hereditary 
in his family. The grandson of this Pepin of Landers, also 
named Pepin, led the forces of Austrasia against Neustria and 
in the battle of Testry, in 687, achieved the unification of the 
two kingdoms. This was a momentous event. A little later 
Pepin II succeeded in putting down revolts throughout the 
former Frankish domains and even began a new period of ex¬ 
pansion in the conquest of German tribes on the north and 
east. In 714 this remarkable mayor of the palace was succeeded 
by a son destined to mould events in a still more masterful way. 
This son is known to history as Karl Martel. With him the 
“Great Century” of the history of the Franks may be said to 
begin. 

A powerful political and military state was essential, we have 
said, if civilization was to advance in the West. With the coming 
to power of Karl Martel in 714 this may be said to have been 
achieved. It will be well to stop at this point to examine the 
institutions of the Frankish state. We can see at once that the 
primitive institutions of the early Germans have either vanished 
completely or have been transformed almost out of recognition. 

Growth of Royal Authority 

The monarchy was now the first institution in the Frankish 
state. We have already seen that the one institution which 


THE RISE OF THE FRANKISH STATE 


129 


lived and grew in the new German kingdoms founded within 
the Roman Empire was the kingship. The development of the 
kingship was the greatest of all among the Franks. By the 
beginning of the eighth century it practically dominated every¬ 
thing else. Such a development was inevitable. The long 
series of successful conquests by the Franks had been accom¬ 
plished under the leadership of their kings; or if not directly 
under royal leadership it was the work of the mayors of the 
palace in the royal name. Again, some common bond of union 
was essential if the varied Germanic peoples and the Roman 
provincials in the Frankish state were to be held together. The 
Frankish kingship was the only possible bond; just as in the 
British Empire at present the monarchy is the one common 
bond of union simply because there is no alternative. 

Further, the long series of conquests had brought to the royal 
house an immense personal estate in land. From his large and 
numerous domains the king drew most of his revenue. On these 
estates, furthermore, he lived, moving from villa to villa as 
necessity or impulse dictated. An elaborate system of admin¬ 
istration was developed in the royal estates. This was headed by 
the mayor of the palace, which explains, in part, the political 
importance of that official. As the wealth and power of the 
king increased he assumed more and more of the estate and 
trappings of royalty, borrowing largely from Roman forms. Un¬ 
like the Roman emperors, however, the Frankish kings had 
no fixed capital. Wherever the king happened to be was the 
seat of government for the moment and the whole body of 
officials and courtiers moved when the king moved. Mediaeval 
monarchs were passionately fond of hunting, in general, and 
the favorite residences of kings were hunting lodges. A royal 
villa which lay on the edge of a great forest made an ideal lo¬ 
cation for a “palace” and the kings of the Franks had such 
villas at Compiegne, Attigny, Verberie, and elsewhere. Royal 
residences were therefore pretty crude affairs, built mostly of 
wood, and surrounded by the stables, granaries, paddocks, fields, 
and pastures of a great farm. 

The all-pervading authority of the Frankish king was con¬ 
veyed to the various parts of his dominions through the medium 


130 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


of officers called counts. The development of the office of count 
is, perhaps, the greatest single achievement of the Franks in 
the field of political institutions. The entire kingdom was 
divided into counties, at the head of each of which was a count. 
Each count was a king in microcosm, judging, taxing, and com¬ 
manding in the name of his royal master. Thus the count 
was a sort of political man-of-all-work. Counties in the German 
parts of the Frankish dominions were divided into hundreds, 
at the head of each of which was a hundred-man who was the 
count’s “man”. Within the hundreds were the village com¬ 
munities, subject in many ways to the authority of the hundred- 
man and of the count. Thus the authority of the crown was 
felt in the most minute subdivisions of the kingdom. 

Growing Importance of the Nobles 

From the king we may turn to the nobles. This class had 
undergone a striking development in numbers and in importance 
by the end of the seventh century. One important source of 
this development is to be found in Roman Gaul, as it was when 
conquered by the Merovingians. As we have seen, most of 
the land of Roman Gaul had been held in large estates by sena¬ 
torial families. During the Merovingian period these families 
still survived, for the most part, and held on to their estates. 
The Frankish kings chose many of their counselors and officials 
from these families. The bishops and abbots also were chosen 
chiefly from these families. Thus a nobility of political prestige 
and honor as well as of wealth grew up in Roman Gaul. But 
there is another reason for the increase in the numbers and the 
importance of the nobility, both Frankish and Gallo-Roman. 
That is the vast economic and social change which we call 
feudalism. Beginning in the later Roman Empire feudalism 
made much progress in the Merovingian centuries. This prog¬ 
ress we shall estimate and attempt to explain a little later. 

A final factor which enhanced the political prestige of the 
nobility may be noticed here. The vast expansion of Frank¬ 
ish territory in the three centuries following the death of Clovis 
had made it physically impossible to carry on government 
through a popular assembly of freemen. Furthermore, the au- 


THE RISE OF THE FRANKISH STATE 


131 


thority of the king had grown so greatly during the period, and 
his prestige and wealth as well, that he was unwilling to consult 
with a body of men so low in the social scale. Gradually an as¬ 
sembly of nobles and bishops took the place of the popular as¬ 
sembly. There came to be three of these assemblies of magnates 
in the Merovingian period, one for each of the three kingdoms. 
These assemblies met at the royal summons each year, usually 
in March, and were known as the March Fields {Campus Mar - 
tius). Each of the magnates brought a gift to the king, thus 
making a considerable addition to the inconsiderable public 
revenue. The nobles came armed to the assembly; and if war 
was declared, they embarked on the campaigns straightway, 
as had the freemen formerly. During its sessions this assembly 
might be called upon to act as a court in cases of high treason. 
In its presence, moreover, royal decrees were promulgated. 

Fairly early in the Merovingian period, it would seem, the 
nobles began to come to the assemblies on horseback, and grad¬ 
ually they learned to fight on horseback also. Forage was not 
very plentiful in the month of March in this part of Europe. 
As the number of nobles on horseback increased, lack of forage 
became a problem, so about the middle of the seventh century 
the time of meeting was moved from March to May. This is a 
significant change. We may take it that it marks the use among 
the Franks of cavalry in war on a considerable scale. 

Decline of the Freemen 

The freemen, formerly a most important class in the Frankish 
state, had declined greatly in political importance by the close 
of the seventh century. Popular assemblies still met but they 
were of necessity quite local in their scope and they met at the 
summons of a royal official, such as count or hundred-man, to 
give ear to royal decrees. The intrusion of royal authority had 
extended even to the village meetings and the ancient customs 
of the Franks might be overridden by a royal decree. For ex¬ 
ample, in the old days a village community, with common 
lands shared by all the householders, could exclude outsiders 
from coming into the community. Such was the right of the 
community by immemorial custom. Now we find that if an 


132 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


outsider has secured a writ from the king he may break through 
the village custom, and if the villagers persist in their resistance 
they will be heavily fined. Further, military service, formerly 
the right of the freeman, was now deemed a duty to the state, 
enforceable by royal authority. 

The Gallo-Roman freemen must be distinguished from the 
Frankish freemen. The wergeld of the Gallo-Roman freemen 
was 100 solidi, of the free Frank 200 solidi. This difference 
argues a considerable differentiation in status. Each nationality 
lived under its own law. In a dispute between two Gallo-Romans 
Roman law was invoked. In a dispute between a Frank and a 
Gallo-Roman in which the latter was the defendant, Roman 
law was used, also. Disputes between Franks or disputes in 
which a Frank was the defendant were tried according to 
Frankish law. However, these distinctions between law and 
wergeld tended to disappear during the lapse of the centuries. 
Both the free Franks and the Gallo-Roman freemen were 
obliged to serve in the army side by side. Intermarriage between 
the two nationalities was common. Frankish freemen gave 
their sons and daughters Roman names, and Gallo-Roman 
freemen gave their children German names. Above all, both 
nationalities were of the same religion. Freemen were more 
numerous in the more German parts of the Frankish state, at 
the close of the seventh century, than in Gaul. 

Slavery among the Franks 

We may next consider the lot of the slaves. Both the German 
conquerors and the Gallo-Roman provincials had held slaves. 
However, the number of human beings held in bondage in¬ 
creased considerably during the Merovingian period. Captives 
taken in war or in slave raids and freemen plunged into debt 
by gambling or other causes added to the slave population in a 
society which had settled down to agricultural life. Anglo- 
Saxon slaves were valued among the Franks for their beauty, 
and Slavs for their docility and strength. It was during this 
period, apparently, that the word “slave”, derived from 
“Slav”, replaced the word servus. Undoubtedly the lot of 
the slave in this period was not a happy one. We hear of a 


THE RISE OF THE FRANKISH STATE 


133 


great man among the Franks who compelled his slaves to ex¬ 
tinguish their torches by pressing them against their bare legs. 
We note in the law of the Salian Franks that one who killed a 
slave must pay thirty solidi, which is the same as was paid for 
stealing a horse. In both cases the money was paid to the owner; 
that is, the thirty solidi were not paid to the family or relatives 
of the slain man. 

The church tried hard to alleviate these conditions, as may 
be seen in numerous canons passed by the councils of bishops 
and abbots during this period. A union between two slaves 
blessed by the church was deemed a lawful marriage and must 
be respected. Owners were not to separate wife and husband, 
children and parents, in selling or otherwise transferring their 
claim to ownership. 

The Beginnings of Feudalism 

But freemen and slaves, alike, were doomed to extinction. 
A new social order was slowly evolving. Feudalism did not 
stand complete until the tenth century, but it made much prog¬ 
ress during the Merovingian centuries. First, the freemen began, 
slowly, to diminish in numbers. The reason for this was, simply, 
that they were unable to maintain themselves any longer. The 
burdens laid upon the freemen by the state were heavier than 
they could bear. This was particularly true of the duty of 
military service, or heerban. Compulsory military service, for¬ 
merly the right of all German freemen, had now become an oner¬ 
ous burden. The freemen were compelled not merely to come to 
the array when summoned but to equip themselves and to 
campaign at their own expense. During the period of Frankish 
conquests campaigns were very numerous. Frequently a single 
campaign would last all summer; and occasionally, at least, the 
scene of the campaign was far from the home of many of the free¬ 
men compelled to serve. It will be remembered that the Roman 
freemen had suffered much the same fate. And like the Roman 
freemen, the free Franks now began to ask themselves whether 
it were not better to seek a dependent status rather than to 
attempt longer to maintain themselves in a status which had 
become a burden to them. Furthermore, during the disorders 


134 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


of the civil wars of the sixth and seventh centuries, the freemen 
began to suffer many things at the hands of the more unprin¬ 
cipled of the great landlords among whose estates their own 
small farms lay scattered. 

But what was a poor badgered freeman to do? Selling his 
land was not the way out. There was no money economy at 
the time, and the freeman would have found no way to make 
use of his cash even if he had got hold of some. There were 
no large cities to move to, no industries to engage in. There was 
a course open to the freemen of that day, however. It will be 
remembered that there had developed in Roman society, in 
the later days of the Empire, a class of agricultural dependents 
known as coloni. These were of free status in most respects 
but were settled on the land in the villa or estate of some 
great landlord, permanently cultivating in their own fashion 
the land allotted to them and paying a rent in kind to their 
lord. The coloni were obliged to remain on the soil, but this 
was the largest element of unfreedom in their condition. Some of 
them had formerly been slaves; their status was therefore much 
improved. But many of the coloni had been freemen who had 
voluntarily assumed the status of dependence to escape the 
crushing burdens laid upon them by the state. 

The coloni had formed a fairly numerous class in Roman Gaul, 
where large estates were the rule. The economic and social 
elements in the status of the colonus were, therefore, quite 
familiar to the Franks. The Merovingian centuries furnished 
a favorable environment for the growth of this social class. 
Frankish freemen could escape from the burdens of the state 
or the struggle for existence by sinking to the status of serfs. 
And not individuals only but whole communities began to seek 
out the local bishop, abbot, or noble, to enter into a relation¬ 
ship of dependence. 

In commending himself to his more powerful neighbor the 
freeman set up a two-fold relationship. There was, first, the 
personal relationship between client and patron. In this the pa¬ 
tron undertook to protect his client, whether against the state 
or against his neighbors, to maintain him in his law suits, to 
stand sponsor for him in all his undertakings. On the other 


THE RISE OF THE FRANKISH STATE 


135 


hand, the client engaged to assist the patron in his undertak¬ 
ings when called upon, and to join with the other clients of the 
patron to form a group of retainers for the defense of the lord’s 
estates or for the use of the lord in the prosecution of his quarrels 
with his neighbors. The second relationship was economic. 
The freeman’s farm was handed over to his new lord, who in 
turn allowed his client a life tenure of the land on payment of 
a moderate rent. The freeman continued to live on his farm and 
farm it as of old, therefore. But he sacrificed, for his own pro¬ 
tection during the remainder of his life, his own full proprietary 
rights as well as those of his heirs. It came to pass naturally 
enough, as this process went on, that members of the landed 
aristocracy began to vie with each other in increasing the num¬ 
ber of their retainers. This might be done by dividing up out¬ 
lying sections of their own estates and persuading freemen to 
colonize them; or, small freemen might be constrained to be¬ 
come vassals by force or by fraud. It seems clear that a very 
considerable rivalry went on among the great aristocrats in 
which the bishops and abbots and the king himself joined. 
Churchmen were in an especially favored position in this ri¬ 
valry, since they could appeal to men to become vassals of the 
church for the good of their souls as well as for the protection 
of their bodies. 

We have seen, thus far, that freemen might commend them¬ 
selves voluntarily or that they might be constrained by the 
great landlords. Finally, we must notice that the Merovingian 
kings themselves contributed to the feudalizing process. As the 
class of freemen thinned out it became increasingly difficult to 
get soldiers for the army. Furthermore, cavalry came more and 
more into use as the favored arm in war. The foot soldier was 
very slow by comparison, and, further, he was reluctant to 
leave the neighborhood of his own home. Moreover, the Frank¬ 
ish dominions were very extensive. We can understand, there¬ 
fore, how the Frankish kings came to rely more and more on 
the landed aristocracy and their retainers in their wars, for 
these men were mounted. Arabs fought on horseback and a 
long series of wars between Franks and Arabs began in the 
eighth century. This must have very greatly stimulated the 


136 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


growth of cavalry among the Franks. The expense of equipping 
and maintaining himself in the cavalry service was prohibitive 
for the freeman. In their anxiety to increase the cavalry the 
Merovingian monarchs began to grant great chunks of their 
own private domains to landlords, who were thus laid under 
the obligation of furnishing a certain number of cavalrymen 
in time of war. The recipients of such grants would naturally 
subdivide their estates in such a way as to insure that a proper 
number of their own retainers could be equipped to serve the 
king. 

One more point and we have finished with the ways in which 
feudalism was establishing itself in the Merovingian state. We 
have noticed that even in the later days of the Roman Empire 
the great landlords exercised a certain amount of dominion over 
every colonus as well as authority over their slaves. This au¬ 
thority increased rather than diminished as time went on. 
Political authority and ownership of land were closely related 
among the Germans as well as among the Romans, and during 
the Merovingian period this relationship became closer still. 
The Merovingian counts were, in general, rapacious and corrupt. 
To escape from their authority became the ambition of every 
great landlord. Frequently this could be done. The landlord 
could go to the king and by persuasion backed up by gifts he 
could secure authority to exclude the count from his estates. 
The judging, taxing, and commanding authority of the count 
would no longer be exercised within the domains of such a 
privileged landlord. It would now be exercised within his own 
domains by the landlord himself. 

Thus in Merovingian Gaul of the seventh century we have 
in embryo all the elements of the feudal “ system ” of the eleventh 
century. A similar process was going on in western Europe 
generally, north of the Alps. The land held by the former free¬ 
man in life tenure was the later benefice. The former freeman 
was now a vassal. His patron was the seigneur , and finally, the 
seigneur had an immunity within which he exercised feudal 
jurisdiction. In seventh century Gaul this process was still 
very partial, very incomplete. Some freemen had disappeared 
but many still remained. Not only so, but the organizing genius 


THE RISE OF THE FRANKISH STATE 


137 


of Charlemagne, wholly centralizing and anti-feudal in temper, 
arrested and even reversed the feudalizing process for a time. 
After his death, however, it was carried swiftly forward to 
completion, as we shall see. 

For Further Reading 
W. R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas, p. 53 

J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 
chap. 8 

C. W. C. Oman, The Dark Ages, chaps. 17 and 18 
Cambridge Mediaeval History, II, chaps. 4 and 5 

S. Dill, Roman Society in Gaul in the Merovingian Age 

T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, vol. VII 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 


THE CENTURY OF THE GREAT CAROLINGIANS 

From the accession of Karl Martel to the death of Charle¬ 
magne is exactly one hundred years (714-814). This is the great 
age of the Frankish state. If the high level of order, security, 
and culture reached during this period could have been main¬ 
tained through the next century or two without relapse, western 
civilization might now be two or three centuries ahead of where 
it is. And how interesting it would be to live two or three 
centuries from now! 


Karl Martel 

Pepin II, mayor of the palace of the combined kingdoms of 
Austrasia and Neustria, left three grandsons. One of them be¬ 
came mayor of the palace of Neustria and the other two, jointly, 
of Austrasia. The great landed nobles refused to sanction this 
arrangement, however. The grandsons were not strong enough 
to control the magnates and a brief period of anarchy ensued. 
Opportunely there stepped forward at this moment an illegiti¬ 
mate son of Pepin II named Karl, better known as Karl Martel. 
He was a man of unusual bodily and mental vigor and of great 
military ability, qualities which appeared again in his more 
famous grandson. Karl Martel, by right of natural ability, 
assumed the leadership of the Frankish state and, though not 
so designated by Pepin II, became the real fulfiller of his father’s 
policy. 

The name Martel signifies “valiant” or “bold”, and Karl 
amply justified the title. He seized the office of mayor of the 
palace in Austrasia and, turning about, conquered Neustria. 
Karl thus became king in fact and toward the end of his “reign” 
he even ventured to rule without a king. Decrees were issued 
in his name; he presided over the royal court of justice, decided 
questions of war and peace, and sometimes presided over the 

138 


CENTURY OF THE GREAT CAROLINGLAN’S 


139 


great assemblies of the nobles. Karl contributed greatly to the 
unification of the Frankish domains. He reduced Burgundy to 
obedience and appointed his own counts and bishops there. 
The duke of Aquitaine, who had assumed a semi-independent 
state at his capital Toulouse, was compelled to acknowledge 
KarTs overlordship. In the year 711 the Arabs had crossed 
the Straits of Gibraltar and had conquered Spain. In 720 they 
crossed the Pyrenees. The duke of Aquitaine succeeded in 
holding them in check for some years but in 732 a new Arab 
leader appeared, a member of a sect of extreme fanatics. Duke 
Eudo was defeated at the Garonne river; Bordeaux was taken 
and burned. The Arabs then advanced through central Gaul. 
Duke Eudo sent messages of appeal to Karl, who hastened 
southward. He met the Arab host near Tours, held them in 
check for a few days, and then attacked them. The result was 
a decisive triumph for Karl. The Arab leader was slain; the 
vanquished Arabs slowly withdrew southward through Aqui¬ 
taine, much harassed by the natives. Karl followed up his 
success by driving the Arabs out of Avignon and Provence. 
He then got in touch with the king of the Lombards, Liut- 
prand, hoping to close the coast-line of Provence and Italy 
to the invaders. Fortunately for Karl and his Mohammedan 
policy, dissension soon broke out among the Moslems of Spain 
and Africa. No more armies were sent against Gaul. Following 
his defeat of the Mohammedans, Karl reasserted the authority 
of the Frankish crown in Alemaimia, Thuringia, and Bavaria. 
He even sent an expedition against the Saxons, whose conquest 
was to be the greatest labor of Charlemagne. 

King Pepin 

Karl Martel left two sons, Pepin and Carloman, and after 
the evil custom of the Franks he divided his vast power between 
them. For six years they shared authority, seemingly with 
mutual good will and success. Then Carloman retired to a 
monastery he had founded in Rome, and the Frankish state 
found political unity once more. The time had now come when, 
in Pepin’s opinion, he that had the power of king should have 
the name also. Certainly the new family had won the right to 


140 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


lead the Frankish state as surely as the Merovingians had lost 
it. Pepin proceeded carefully and with great wisdom. He sent 
a mission to Pope Zacharias in Rome to propound the question 
whether it would be better that he should be king who held 
the reality of power rather than he who had the substance. The 
pope after formal consideration awarded the kingship to Pepin. 
It is well to recall that in Rome itself the pope ruled while 
another reigned. A great assembly of the Frankish nobles rati¬ 
fied the pope’s decision, and in November, 751, Pepin was 
crowned and anointed king by the Frankish bishops. 

Two points of much significance emerge here. First, the 
bishop of Rome had assumed the right to decide a political 
question of the first magnitude. This illustrates the growing 
political authority of the papacy. Second, the Frankish state 
was here recognized as the strong arm of the Roman church 
in the West. And the church was in dire need of a strong arm 
at that time; for there were many to be found fighting against 
God. 

“The emperor of the Romans” at Constantinople was still 
the nominal sovereign of Rome and he was still in actual posses¬ 
sion of much of Italy. From him imperial decrees and imperial 
messages continued to come to the pope. Ordinarily the eastern 
emperor was well content to have the pope rule the duchy of 
Rome in the emperor’s name, for the wealthy bishop kept up 
the city’s defenses and zealously fostered the well-being of 
the Roman people; and he asked no salary of the emperor. 
Rather foolishly, the emperor had sought from time to time 
to intervene in theological disputes and to order the bishop of 
Rome about, as he did the patriarch of Constantinople. The 
latest controversy between emperor and pope, and one of the 
most severe, was over “image-worship”. In this matter the 
bishop of Rome had stood firm, as indeed he had done on all 
such questions. The emperor had gone so far as to fit out a 
fleet to bring the pope to terms; but a storm had intervened 
and the fleet was scattered. The emperor then weakly sought 
revenge by transferring southern Italy and Sicily from the 
jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome to that of the patriarch of 
Constantinople. Needless to say, this policy of intervention 


CENTURY OF THE GREAT CAROLINGIANS 


141 


followed by punitive measures had had the effect of alienating 
the bishop of Rome and his fellow Italians from their allegiance 
to the emperor. 

Meanwhile a new menace had arisen, full of peril for the 
papacy. The Lombard kingdom in Italy was now led by a suc¬ 
cession of ambitious, vigorous, and warlike monarchs who were 
seeking to unite the whole peninsula under their rule. King 
Liutprand (712-743), a contemporary of Karl Martel, was 
such an one. Shortly after Liutprand’s death another fiery 
leader came forward, named Aistulf. Town after town fell 
before his conquering advance. In 751, only a few months 
after Pepin’s emissary reached Rome, Ravenna fell and with 
it the exarchate of the Eastern Empire. The Lombard king 
then marched straight for Rome, demanding that the Romans 
yield to him or be put to the sword. The bishop of Rome fran¬ 
tically sent messenger after messenger to the eastern emperor. 
Despairing of help from that quarter, finally, he turned to the 
Franks. 

The Alliance between Pepin and the Pope 

It should be pointed out that this is not the first time that 
a bishop of Rome had thought of the Franks as possible allies. 
In a previous crisis during the reign of the Lombard king 
Liutprand, the pope had appealed to Karl Martel. That crisis 
passed before Karl could respond. The new crisis was more pro¬ 
longed and more severe. Rome was clearly at the mercy of the 
Lombards. Spurred on by necessity the pope, Stephen II, set 
out for the north. Drawing near Pavia he sought an interview 
with the Lombard king but was refused. The pope then crossed 
the Alps into Burgundy and journeyed northward toward the 
court of King Pepin, then in residence at one of the royal 
villas on the Marne. Some miles from its destination the papal 
cavalcade was met by a deputation of Franks led by the eleven 
year old boy Karl, son of Pepin, later to be the greatest of all 
the Frankish kings. This seems to have been Charlemagne’s 
first appearance in the pages of history. At a distance of three 
miles from the court the pope was met by King Pepin himself, 
who dismounted and postrated himself before his guest. Rising 


142 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


to his feet, Pepin humbly led the papal mount by the bridle. 
In such wise the pope arrived at the Frankish capital, in 
June, 754. 

Months of negotiations ensued. What actually took place 
between pope and monarch has been much disputed and is 
even yet not clear. A formal agreement of some sort was ar¬ 
rived at, it seems. King Pepin’s own position was not yet se¬ 
cure. His monkish brother had returned to Gaul to “lobby” 
for the Lombards. This brother’s children were still living. 
The better to secure his own hold and that of his sons upon 
the Frankish throne Pepin was again crowned, by the pope 
himself, at Saint Denis. The title “patrician of the Romans” 
was probably conferred upon Pepin at this time. Just what this 
title meant or was intended to mean it is impossible to say. 
The second coronation, coupled with the new distinction, must 
have strengthened Pepin’s position and helped make his dy¬ 
nasty secure. So much for Pepin’s side of the contract. 

Establishment of Papal Authority in Italy 

But what of the pope and Italy? Suppose King Pepin in¬ 
vaded Italy and defeated the Lombards. What then? Would 
Italy be held by Pepin in trust for the eastern emperor? This 
seems improbable. But if not, what would be the relation be¬ 
tween the new conqueror of Italy and the bishop of Rome? 
It seems that an answer to this question was arrived at, as 
follows. The pope was to have all Italy from Parma and Mantua 
on the north to the borders of Apulia on the south, in full 
sovereignty. A copy of what purports to be an agreement be¬ 
tween the pope and Pepin, as later ratified by Pepin’s son Karl, 
has come down to us, dated in the year 774 at Ravenna. If 
this document is authentic it would seem that the legend of 
the “donation of Constantine”, which had been current in 
Europe for some two hundred years, was a factor which influ¬ 
enced Pepin in his treaty with the pope. As the legend runs, 
the emperor Constantine was a leper. Pope Sylvester healed 
him, converted him, and baptized him. In gratitude Constan¬ 
tine resigned to the Roman pontiff the city of Rome itself, 
with the imperial palace, and all the other cities and provinces 


CENTURY OF THE GREAT CAROLINGIANS 


143 


of Italy. Constantine also, as the story goes, laid the foundations 
of St. Peter’s and the Lateran palace with his own hands. But 
whatever may have been the exact terms of the treaty between 
the pope and Pepin, or the factors influencing them, the Frank¬ 
ish army, with the pope, set out for Italy in the summer of 754. 
King Aistulf’s resistance was feeble. Close beset in Pavia he came 
to terms, accepting Pepin as overlord and surrendering Ravenna 
with the exarchate to Pepin, who turned it over to the pope. 

Pepin was a great king measured by any standard. He died 
in the prime of life, worn out by his many campaigns, especially 
those against the duchy of Aquitaine, so long resistant to the 
process of assimilation. “ Vigorous, shrewd, persistent, prac¬ 
tical, his own general, and his own prime minister”, Pepin 
contributed much to the consolidation of the Frankish state. 
He was a man of splendid physique and commanding presence, 
and these qualities he transmitted to his son. A great father 
was eclipsed by a greater son. To the reign of that son of Pepin, 
an epoch in the history of Europe, we shall now turn. 

Charlemagne the Man 

Karl the Great, or Charlemagne as he is more commonly 
called, was twenty-six when he succeeded his father. He is 
almost the first individual since the fall of Rome about whose 
personal appearance and habits we may satisfy our curiosity, 
such is the dearth of authentic material during this period. 
Charlemagne’s secretary, Einhard, has left us an exact descrip¬ 
tion of the man, a description which, though written after the 
hero’s death and rather consciously modeled on Roman biog¬ 
raphies, is sufficiently authentic. Einhard says Charlemagne 
was unusually tall and of athletic build. His height was seven 
times the length of his own foot, Einhard tells us, a way of 
reckoning height which is not very satisfactory since it sets up a 
single equation with two unknowns. However, an examination 
of Charlemagne’s skeleton in 1861 showed him to have been six 
feet four inches. Physical proportions and attributes count for 
far more in positions of leadership even now than we commonly 
recognize. In Charlemagne’s day they counted for much more 
than they do now, and he was indeed fortunate in having a 


144 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


commanding physique. He was unfortunate, however, in his 
voice, which was thin and too high-pitched for a man of his 
size. Charlemagne was a man of athletic habit. He personally 
conducted a campaign every summer, and as though this were 
not enough, he was beyond measure addicted to hunting, riding, 
and swimming. He was abstemious in his eating and drinking, 
with the Spartan self-restraint of a trained athlete. Indeed 
Charlemagne seems to have had none of the minor vices. His 
major vice was sexual indulgence, in which he seemed sensible 
of no social or religious inhibition. What he allowed in himself 
he countenanced in others, moreover, and the tone of his court 
was disappointingly low even in that age. He was of a pleasant, 
cheerful disposition, though he could be ruthless enough at 
times when roused. This does not mean that he was “an easy 
mark”, a good fellow who could not resist his friends even when 
the good of the state was in question. He was every inch a 
king and no one, even of his own companions, was likely to for¬ 
get that fact more than once. Most important of all, perhaps, 
Charlemagne was a man of extraordinary mental and physical 
vitality, able to carry for more than forty years a load of varied 
responsibilities which would seem to be as crushing as that of 
the American presidency. Einhard tells us that Charlemagne 
remained in excellent health throughout his long reign until 
very near the end. 

Charlemagne the Statesman 

Of Charlemagne George Burton Adams says, “A very general 
opinion has ranked him among the greatest political leaders of 
history.” A great political leader, Professor Adams continues, 
“is one who does the things that are wisely adapted to meet the 
needs and dangers of the time.” The great need of Charle¬ 
magne’s time, surely, as of all ages since the fall of Rome, was 
the creation of a powerful state in which the civilizing work of 
mediaeval society could go on. Instinctively, with little or no 
appreciation of its historical importance, the leaders of the 
Franks had been striving toward that end. There were, in 
general, two obstacles to the creation of such a state, divisive 
and disintegrating forces within and the constant pressure of 












































146 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


barbarian peoples from without. We have seen how Karl Martel 
and Pepin had wrestled with these antagonists. Charlemagne 
took up the work of integration and expansion where his father 
and his grandfather had left off and carried it to the highest 
point ever attained under the Franks. He personally led fifty- 
three campaigns, and we are justified in the assumption that 
all these campaigns were part of a conscious and connected plan 
for fortifying and consolidating the Frankish state. King Pepin 
fit his death had followed the usual custom of dividing his 
realm between his two sons, Karl and Karloman, being either 
blinded to the larger interests of the age or unable to resist 
immemorial custom. Karloman died conveniently three years 
later and Charlemagne was fortunately able to begin with an 
undisputed claim to the whole of the Frankish domains. 

Conquests of Charlemagne 

We may survey Charlemagne’s career of conquest and con¬ 
solidation geographically rather than chronologically. On the 
Spanish border he followed up Karl Martel’s successes against 
the Mohammedans by crossing the Pyrenees and driving the 
Arabs beyond the Ebro. Then he set up a buffer state, with 
Barcelona as its capital, to hold the frontier. This became 
known as the Spanish March. Later on in his reign the Arabs 
were driven from Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Isles, 
thus sensibly weakening the hold of the Saracen pirates on the 
western Mediterranean. 

Turning to Italy, Charlemagne took over his father’s policy 
of holding the Lombards in check, as the ally of the pope. 
Charlemagne first tried diplomacy, marrying a Lombard prin¬ 
cess. After a few years, however, he repudiated his Lombard 
wife for personal and political reasons, and invaded Italy. 
Charlemagne acted with great decision, annexing the Lombard 
kingdom and taking the title “King of the Lombards” himself. 
Proceeding to Rome, he confirmed his father’s grant of the 
exarchate to the pope and entered Rome as friend and ally. 
What Charlemagne’s plans for southern Italy may have been 
we can only guess, but he never actually extended his authority 
over the Lombard duchies south of Rome. 


CENTURY OF THE GREAT CAROLINGIANS 


147 


Northward and eastward the Frankish state was still hemmed 
in and pressed upon by various peoples, chiefly Germanic and 
Slavic, most of whom were not yet Christianized. We should 
bear in mind, always, that the contest between Christianity 
and heathendom was a struggle between civilization and bar¬ 
barism. In the Europe of that day the acceptance of Christianity 
was an essential prerequisite to any advance, however slight, 
in civilization. The stiffest resistance that Charlemagne found 
in the north was in the land between the Rhine and the Elbe, 
held by the Saxons. These Germanic tribes were still living in 
the fashion of the early Germans and had been very little in¬ 
fluenced by Christianity as yet. Charlemagne found them very 
difficult to conquer. He led a campaign against them every 
summer for thirty-two summers. This fact speaks volumes for 
his persistence as well as for his appreciation of the vital im¬ 
portance of success in this quarter. 

It is interesting to see how consciously and systematically 
Charlemagne used the church as his agency of civilization among 
the Saxons. His technique was as follows. First, an army was 
led into a section of Saxon territory to scatter the warrior bands 
and to overawe the tribes, exacting from their chiefs a formal 
submission. This might have to be repeated several times. 
Ultimately, strongholds were built and garrisons of Frankish 
soldiers installed to quell uprisings. Next, the region was divided 
into bishoprics. These were well endowed with land confiscated 
for the purpose. Monasteries were founded, also, and churches 
built. Then special laws were enacted for the protection of the 
lives of the clergy and for the safe-guarding of church property. 
These laws entailed penalties so severe as to be ferocious. When 
the United States acquired the Philippine Islands the govern¬ 
ment made a very similar use of the public school system in the 
work of civilization. Schools were built and teachers provided 
for and paid by the government. Special laws were enacted for 
the punishment of any who harmed school teachers or damaged 
school property, and garrisons of United States soldiers were 
established to enforce the laws. 

In spite of Charlemagne’s best efforts, however, the Saxons 
treated him to an occasional uprising that massacred the clergy, 


148 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


destroyed church property, and threatened to undo all his 
work. On such occasions Charlemagne struck back with fury. 
Once he beheaded 4,500 unarmed Saxon captives. On another 
occasion he removed 10,000 rebel families to Neustria. But 
Charlemagne’s work was done at last. The_ Saxons entered the 
charmed circle of civilization, however unwillingly, and a cen¬ 
tury after Charlemagne’s death they had become the leading 
Christian people of Germany, displacing the Franks themselves. 

Against the Slavs on his northern and eastern boundaries 
Charlemagne warred unceasingly. The colonizing of Slav terri¬ 
tory in those regions by Germans is one of the most important 
events of the middle ages, giving Germany a frontier problem 
comparable to that of America in the nineteenth century. 
Charlemagne can scarcely be said to have begun the colonizing 
process, however. He was content to receive the submission of 
the Slav peoples on his borders and to exact tribute. This ap¬ 
plies to the Abotrites, Wiltzes, and Sorbs on the north and to 
the Bohemians on the east. 

Late in his reign Charlemagne extended his empire to the 
Danube by an expedition against the Avars, an expedition in 
which an immense booty was gained. Here again Karl made no 
attempt to assimilate the newly conquered territory but was 
content with submission and tribute. 

The Frankish state was now at its greatest extent. North, 
east, and south the line of barbarism and heathendom had been 
pushed back. Charlemagne’s vast and varied domains were 
truly imperial in extent, calling to mind the conquests of Rome. 
Like Rome, also, Charlemagne’s “empire” had a fringe of bar¬ 
barian peoples still unconquered, a perpetual menace to peace 
of mind when not an imminent peril to peace itself. On the 
north, for example, were the Danes, quite pagan, the most 
formidable fighters of all of the Germans, terribly efficient in 
war. On the south, to choose another example, was the Mo¬ 
hammedan world, divided now and quiescent but as dangerous 
as a smouldering volcano. It is said that late in his reign Charle¬ 
magne and some of his followers were on the summit of one of 
the French Alps, looking out over the valley, which stretched 
southward for miles. As they gazed they were amazed to see 


CENTURY OF THE GREAT CAROLINGIANS 


149 


several villages in ashes. Inquiry revealed that the destruction 
of the villages was the work of Danes in a recent summer’s 
raid. It is said that Charlemagne wept. Even if this story is 
not true, it embodies the essential truth that Charlemagne’s 
work of consolidating and fortifying and his fifty-three cam¬ 
paigns, the labor of a Titan, were largely futile. 

The Private Domains of the Carolingians 

To conquer is one thing; to rule is another. Charlemagne 
proved that he could do both. In his government he took over 
and made the fullest use of the institutions of his predecessors. 
As had become increasingly true among the Franks, the au¬ 
thority of the state was almost entirely the personal authority 
of the king. For example, there was no distinction between the 
royal revenue and the revenue of the state. Indeed, the revenue 
of the state was derived almost entirely from the private estates 
of the king. These estates were now of an immense extent. To 
the large holdings of the Carolingian mayors of the palace had 
been added the crown lands of the Merovingian kings. It has 
been estimated that the private land (“fisc”) of the Carolin¬ 
gians amounted to 1615 separate domains. A single domain 
might contain anywhere from 30 to 70 villas, and many of them 
included, besides, far-stretching forests. Charlemagne was con¬ 
spicuously successful as an administrator of his private estate. 
He drew up, early in his reign, a famous set of regulations which 
served as a model for other landlords through the middle ages. 

This Capitulare de villis sets forth in minute detail the manage¬ 
ment of the royal farms. For example, local stewards are to see 
that each village has a sufficient number of blacksmiths, cart- 
wrights, shoemakers, and so forth. Then, certain farms are 
designated as chief farms and on these storehouses are to be 
built in which the surplus produce from the other farms may be 
stored, either for later sale or for direct consumption by the 
royal household on its annual visit. Besides the income from 
the royal estates, the revenue of the state was made up of fines 
levied in the royal courts of law, gifts of the great landlords on 
their annual visit to the national assembly, perpetuating the 
ancient German custom, and booty taken in war. The chron- 


150 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


iclers agree that the booty taken from the Avars was the great¬ 
est windfall of the reign. It will be noted that of taxation in 
the modern sense there is no trace. 

The New Basis of Military Service 
For his military force Charlemagne relied, as had his predeces¬ 
sors, on the compulsory service of the freemen and on the cav¬ 
alry service of the great landlords. From his military policy 
we may learn something of Charlemagne’s statesmanlike power 
of innovation. In levying the compulsory service of the free¬ 
men he early adopted the principle of “ capacity to pay.” No 
freeman who had not a certain amount of property, either in 
land or in movable goods or in both, was obliged to serve. Such 
small men, exempt themselves, had to contribute according 
to their ability to the equipment of those who did serve, how¬ 
ever. The amount of land requisite to produce one armed man 
varied in different campaigns throughout the reign, but the 
average was three hides (about 360 acres). In putting military 
service on the basis of capacity to pay Charlemagne was merely 
meeting the changed economic conditions of his time. The old 
obligation of military service by every freeman rested upon the 
economic fact that all freemen were of much the same estate. 

The System of Counts and Counties 
For the more effective exercise of their authority the Frankish 
kings had divided their dominions into counties, as we have 
seen, at the head of each of which was a royal official known as 
a count. Under Charlemagne the county system of government 
reached its highest development. Every part of his vast terri¬ 
tories, except those not completely incorporated, such as the 
Slav and Avar conquests, was divided into counties. One of 
Charlemagne’s innovations was to organize, on the frontiers of 
his empire, border counties known as marches or marks, in 
which special provision was made for strongholds and garrisons. 
Among such were the Spanish march against the Mohamme¬ 
dans, the Breton march, the Danish mark, and the fringe of 
marks on the Slav frontier. Sometimes, too, a small group of 
counties were united into a duchy under a duke, who became a 
sort of super-count. 


CENTURY OF THE GREAT CAROLINGIANS 


151 


Within the county the count was supreme, exercising the 
full extent of the royal authority. He levied the military service 
owed by the freemen, summoned them to the campaigns, and 
personally led them, with the royal vassals of the county, in 
the campaign. Within his county, also, the count maintained 
the general peace in the name of the king. Two or three times 
a year he held a general court for his district, summoning all 
the freemen to it. There the count dealt in person with especially 
important or especially difficult cases, reserved from the courts 
of the hundreds and villages for his attention. Subordinate 
officials of various kinds assisted the count in his multifarious 
duties. His principal deputy was known as a viscount. It is 
worth noting that in Charlemagne’s day the count made use 
of the officials of private landlords, relying on them to assist 
in the work of justice and defense. But it is equally noteworthy 
that under Charlemagne the authority of the count over these 
private officials was unchallenged. The count stood forth, 
therefore, as an official of great authority and importance, 
wielding in the name of the king the vast powers of the royal 
office. 


The Missi Dominici 

But how could Charlemagne make sure that the counts 
would exercise their great authority properly? The Frankish 
state was now very extensive. Some of its counties lay at a 
great distance from the center. The office of count was held for 
life, usually. The counts were often ambitious men with their 
fortunes to make, who hoped to make their offices hereditary. 
The Frankish king could not be everywhere present to super¬ 
vise the work of the counts, to investigate charges of oppres¬ 
sion and corruption, and to punish the guilty. The genius of 
Charlemagne was equal to the task of devising a plan which 
enabled him to scrutinize the work of his counts. This was the 
institution of the missi dominici, or supervisors of the counts. 
Counties were grouped together in a small number of large dis¬ 
tricts called missatica. In some cases at least these districts 
coincided in area with the already existing provinces of the 
church. To each district Charlemagne sent each year two or 


152 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


three missi dominici. The missi were great lords who were 
above the temptations of small graft. A bishop or other high 
ecclesiastical dignitary was usually one of the number. Further¬ 
more, Charlemagne changed their districts every year and, as 
further precaution, no two missi went forth together two years 
in succession. 

In each county the missi got into communication with the 
count, his subordinate officials, and the people themselves. 
Getting into touch with the people was accomplished by the 
summoning of a general assembly of the county, usually in the 
month of May. Here charges could be preferred. Inquiry was 
made through groups of inhabitants under oath, a precursor 
of the jury system. The missi were invested with complete 
judicial authority to right all wrongs when and where found. 
Charlemagne drew up articles of instruction for the missi, 
from time to time, a sort of questionnaire or list of things to 
be inquired into as they made their rounds. They were “to 
do justice to churches, widows, orphans, the poor, and all the 
people.” Thus, the fundamental idea of the Frankish monarchy, 
the immediate and personal authority of the king, was carried 
out even in Charlemagne’s widespread dominions. It has been 
said of the missi that “nothing reveals more surely the peculiar 
nature of the [Frankish] state.” In the latter part of his reign 
Charlemagne associated his three sons with himself in the work 
of governing. Charles was made king of Neustria, Pepin, of 
Italy, and Louis, of Aquitaine. 

Charlemagne and the Church 

Our survey of Charlemagne’s plan of government will not 
be complete until we note how he used the church in his work 
of governing. The supremacy of the royal authority, personal 
and immediate, the fundamental idea of the Frankish monarchy, 
Charlemagne inherited and proceeded to fulfill. It is easy to 
see the implications of this concept of government for the 
church. Over it, too, the state must be supreme. It is doubtful 
whether Charlemagne thought anything about the theory in¬ 
volved. The distinction between church and state was un¬ 
known to his age. It is a modern distinction. Charlemagne 


CENTURY OF THE GREAT CAROLINGIANS 


153 


quite directly and simply made use of the church in his work of 
governing as he had done in his work of civilizing. He looked 
upon the bishops and archbishops as officials of the state no less 
than the counts and dukes. He regarded the bishops and abbots 
as his “vassals”, to be appointed by him and, in case of dis¬ 
loyalty, to be dismissed by him. Charlemagne's capitularies deal 
without distinction with what we would distinguish as spiritual 
and temporal matters. Counts were directed to assist the bishops 
and abbots in ecclesiastical matters, and bishops and abbots 
were directed to assist the counts in the business of the state. 
Further, Charlemagne apparently regarded himself as the 
head of the church within his own dominions. He summoned 
church councils, in which canons were adopted defining the 
jurisdiction of the church and supplementing the ecclesiastical 
penalties, enforcing the collection of the tithe, forbidding the 
bishops to engage personally in battle, and ordering them to 
discipline their clergy. Model sermons were drawn up under 
Charlemagne's direction, and the clergy were directed to preach 
in the language of the people so that all could understand. One 
of these councils over which Charlemagne presided, that at 
Frankfort, in 794, boldly condemned a ruling which had been 
approved by Pope Hadrian I a few years earlier, sanctioning 
the “adoration” of images. A great authority, Milman, hails 
this, somewhat fantastically, as the “first example of Teutonic 
independence, in which the clergy appear as feudal beneficiaries 
around the throne of the temporal liege lord.” Appeals in 
ecclesiastical cases were to lie from bishop to archbishop and 
thence to the king. Charlemagne acted as though the church 
were an institution of the state. 

Charlemagne's interest in the church did not stop at the 
boundary line of his kingdom. In the year 800 he passed some 
weeks in Rome “setting in order the affairs of the church”, as 
Einhard tells us. While there he presided over a council in which 
certain charges were brought against Pope Leo III. On Christ¬ 
mas day, in this year, as Charlemagne knelt at the altar during 
mass, the pope took from the altar a precious crown and placed it 
on the head of the king of the Franks amid the tumultuous ap¬ 
plause of the assembled Franks and Romans. With some of the 


154 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


old imperial ceremony the pope proclaimed Charlemagne Roman 
emperor, thus usurping a function which had been exercised during 
past centuries by the people, the Senate, and the army of Rome. 

The Revival of the Empire 

This crowning and proclaiming of Charlemagne as emperor 
was in reality an insurrection. The capital of the Empire was 
Constantinople, not Rome, and in Constantinople the successors 
of Justinian and Augustus were still ruling. But the Romans 
had always been jealous of Constantinople’s “usurpation” 
and had not ceased to resent the removal of the capital by Con¬ 
stantine. Moreover, the authority of the eastern emperor in 
the West had long been slight, and latterly, with the rise of the 
Lombards, had ceased altogether, as we have seen. Further¬ 
more, no one in the West wished to see this authority restored. 
The West was by now thoroughly alienated from the East, as 
the result of theological and other differences. The bishop of 
Rome was now the biggest man in Italy, and he was very anx¬ 
ious to preserve his freedom of action. His position would be 
imperiled should a restoration of the authority of the eastern 
emperor ever be attempted. 

Furthermore, the moment for insurrection had arrived. The 
emperor Leo IV, dying in 780, had left his widow, the empress 
Irene, as regent in the name of her son, Constantine VI. When, 
in 797, the lad began to assert his authority, his unnatural 
mother dethroned and blinded him and proceeded to rule in 
her own name. Learning of this, the Romans became con¬ 
cerned, we are told by one chronicler, “lest the heathens should 
mock the Christians if the name of emperor had ceased among 
them”, and they resolved, the pope being their leader, to trans¬ 
fer the Empire to the West. It is quite clear that the West re¬ 
garded Charlemagne, after his coronation, as the rightful suc¬ 
cessor of Constantine VI and Justinian as well as of Hadrian 
and Augustus. Charlemagne himself, later on, sought the recog¬ 
nition of his claim at Constantinople and offered to marry 
Irene. This proposal was rejected, and the easterners them¬ 
selves deposed Irene and elected Nicephorus emperor in her 
stead. Thus the East contested the validity of what the West 


CENTURY OF THE GREAT CAROLINGIANS 


155 


had done, and in maintaining its own line of emperors it con¬ 
tinued to contest the claim of the West. 

It will appear from what has been said that the West was 
still under the spell of Rome. The imperial idea, the idea of 
Christian unity under a Roman emperor, fascinated the men 
of the middle ages. “All, even the Saxons and the Slavs, had 
heard of Rome’s glories and revered the name of Caesar.” This 
idea of Christian unity as in the days of Rome is one of the 
dominant factors in mediaeval history. The influence of this 
obsession on the mediaeval mind is incalculable. It is impossible 
to say whether it has done more harm than good. Probably it 
would have been better had the men of the middle ages not 
adopted the idea of imperial unity so slavishly; they might have 
adapted it more wisely to the actual needs of their own time. 

It remains to consider more particularly the part played by 
Charlemagne and the pope in this famous event. Like all men 
Charlemagne was a child of his time. The spell of Rome was 
upon him, also. He cannot have been unmindful to the fact 
that the title of emperor would be of great assistance to him 
in his effort to give to western Europe law and order and se¬ 
curity for the future. Charlemagne’s dominions were imperial 
in extent and in variety. The title of “ king ” was not big enough. 
Charlemagne was a king of kings. The title of “Roman em¬ 
peror” would appeal to the imagination of his subjects. To his 
great personal authority as king would be added the suggestion 
of the limitless power of Rome. We have seen that Charlemagne 
was a man of statesmanlike vision. There can be little doubt, 
especially after the news of Irene’s crime had reached the West, 
that Charlemagne had given the matter of the imperial title 
much consideration. 

The bishop of Rome’s need of a champion in the West had 
been patent for some decades, as we have seen. The Lombards 
had been the most dangerous enemies of recent years, but the 
pope’s own unruly subjects could not be ignored. In the crises 
of the eighth century the kings of the Franks had, by invitation, 
assumed the post of protectors of the papacy. Charlemagne 
inherited and continued this tradition. In the year 774 he had 
assumed the title of king of the Lombards and had been in- 


156 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


vested by the pope with the title of “ patrician” of the Romans. 
In 799 the pope was badly in need of Charlemagne’s strong arm. 
Leo III was assailed by a faction of the Romans during a solemn 
pontifical procession. His assailants knocked him down and 
attempted to blind him and cut'out his tongue. The sorely 
wounded pope was rescued at length by his own partisans. 
When he had recovered sufficiently he fled across the Alps to 
the court of the Frankish king. Later in the same year Charle¬ 
magne journeyed to Rome. Some time in the next year he pre¬ 
sided over a council in Rome, as has been noted. There he 
listened to the charges against the pope, dismissed them, and 
restored the Roman pontiff to his proper authority. Charle¬ 
magne’s acts here were in the finest traditions of the Christian 
emperors. To Pope Leo it must have come as an irresistible 
conclusion that one who had the power and the will to act the 
part of the Christian emperor should have the title. 

One last consideration before we leave this event, which has 
been called the beginning of modern history. Einhard, who 
was Charlemagne’s secretary and biographer, after referring 
to Charlemagne’s visit to Rome in the year 800, has this to say: 
“It was then that he received the titles of Emperor and Augustus 
to which he at first had such an aversion that he declared that 
he would not have set foot in the church the day that they were 
conferred, although it was a great feast-day, if he could have 
foreseen the design of the pope.” This passage is often cited in 
support of the view that Charlemagne objected to receiving the 
crown of empire from the pope on the ground that by so doing 
he was acknowledging the supremacy of the papacy over the 
empire. But Charlemagne can scarcely have foreseen the jealous 
contest for power between empire and papacy which broke out 
three hundred years later! It may have been that Charlemagne’s 
plans were not yet complete; that he had some lingering ob¬ 
jections which had not been overcome. The pope’s action may 
have displeased him, at least momentarily, because of its sud¬ 
denness. But it can have been only for a moment. Charlemagne 
accepted the title of emperor and made use of it in many ways 
through the remaining fourteen years of his reign, extracting 
the last ounce of advantage from it. 


CENTURY OF THE GREAT CAROLINGIANS 


157 


The Carolingian Renascence 

Charlemagne’s reign was marked by a very definite revival 
of learning north of the Alps. It is as easy to underestimate this 
as it is to exaggerate it. When schools are lacking a great ruler 
may sometimes, with advantage, become the teacher of his 
people. In this respect Charlemagne resembled Alfred the 
Great of England, though Alfred was a much better educated 
man in respect to book learning. Judged by our own somewhat 
arbitrary standards, Charlemagne’s personal proficiency was 
small, for though he could read he could not write at all. We 
are told that for years the busy monarch kept writing materials 
under his pillow for practice during his wakeful hours. Appar¬ 
ently he was a sound sleeper, for he never learned to write. 

But Charlemagne had an active and interested mind, and 
he loved to talk. It is a matter of no small significance that 
this man, whose mind must have been occupied well-nigh 
ceaselessly with affairs of state, took pains to gather at his 
court a half-dozen of the leading scholars of Europe. These in¬ 
cluded Alcuin of York, Peter of Pisa, and Agobard the Spaniard. 
In conversation with these learned men, in the play of his own 
mind with their ideas, Charlemagne had his “college education”, 
and there is no better way of getting it. Latin was the language 
of learning and Charlemagne learned to speak it fluently. Greek 
he could understand but not speak. Under Alcuin’s head- 
mastership a palace school was established at Aachen, one of 
Charlemagne’s capitals, in 782. Though it was designed orig¬ 
inally for Charlemagne’s own children and the children of the 
nobles of his court commoners were also admitted. Charlemagne 
was appalled at the ignorance of the clergy, for learning had 
well-nigh died out north of the Alps. The education of the 
clergy was scandalously insufficient even for the demands of 
the Latin service. Charlemagne ordered every large monastery 
to establish a school for the clergy. Later, laymen were ad¬ 
mitted to these monastic schools. Many of the larger cathedrals 
established schools also, Alcuin being a leader in that movement. 

We should not get an exaggerated notion of the learning 
taught in these schools. All scholars were taught to read, for 


158 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


that was a necessary clerical accomplishment. Writing was a 
different matter. Probably most scholars were taught to form 
their letters by following lines cut deeply in blocks of wood. 
Comparatively few, however, were given the opportunity to 
practice writing on parchment and thus become professional 
scribes, for parchment was very expensive. For centuries writing 
continued to be a rare accomplishment, especially among lay¬ 
men. It was the business of experts. Textbooks were neither 
numerous nor illuminating. The favorite reading texts were 
collections of quotations from classical authors. One such book, 
a grammar compiled by Priscian in the fourth century a.d., 
quotes Homer 78 times, Horace 150 times, and Vergil 857 times. 1 
Another textbook consisted of a collection of some 150 couplets 
full of sage advice, after the fashion of the New England Primer. 
Other textbooks were drawn from the works of Boethius, Cassio- 
dorus, and Isidore. Charlemagne interested himself in the 
question of textbooks and directed the collection of Frankish 
folklore and the compiling of a new German and a new Latin 
grammar. He set one of the scholars of his court to work re¬ 
vising the Latin translation of the Greek New Testament. This 
revised version, by Paul the Deacon, was widely used in Charle¬ 
magne’s dominions. 

An especially important place in the Carolingian renascence 
must be awarded to the products of monastic scriptoria, or 
copy-rooms, and this for two reasons. First, the monastic 
scribes now made fresh copies of the classics, basing them on 
the manuscripts of the age of Cassiodorus and earlier times. 
When we remember that of the classical authors known to us 
scarcely one exists save in a copy made in the Carolingian age 
the value of the work of the Carolingian copyists becomes 
clear. Secondly, the style of handwriting developed by the 
copyists of northern Gaul in the age of Charlemagne was of 
immense importance for the future. It is called Caroline minus¬ 
cule. It is, in fact, the model for modern printing. We do not 
make our letters as the Romans did. Only our capitals would 
be familiar to them. The style of handwriting called Caroline 
minuscule, famous for its legibility, its convenience, and its 

1 D. C. Munro, The Middle Ages, p. 84, n. 2. 


CENTURY OF THE GREAT CAROLINGIANS 


159 


beauty, was revived in the early printed books. As used in 
modern typewriters and linotype machines it has well-nigh 
made the conquest of the world. 

We must not exaggerate the Carolingian revival of learning. 
Most of it flowed from royal patronage. It was not a sponta¬ 
neous out-reaching on the part of the people, and it touched the 
masses of mankind not at all. Further, there was very little 
originality in it; nor did the scholars of Charlemagne’s day 
make more than a slight use of the wealth of ancient culture at 
their disposal. However, the monastic and cathedral schools, 
once established, lived on through the darkness and weakness 
of the ninth and tenth centuries and so became the foundation 
of another and much greater revival of learning in the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries. 

For Further Reading 

In addition to the references given under Chapter Ten— 

Einhard, Life of Charlemagne (Translation by S. E. Turner) 

H. W. C. Davis, Charlemagne, the Hero of Two Nations 
T. Hodgkin, Charles the Great 

Cambridge Mediaeval History, II, chaps. 18, 19, and 21 
James Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire 

E. Cubberley, History of Education 

J. B. Mullinger, The Schools of Charles the Great 
L. M. 0. Duchesne, The Beginnings of the Temporal Sovereignty of the 
Popes 

F. Gregorovius, History of Rome in the Middle Ages 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


DECLINE OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE; 

NEW KINGDOMS 

Through the long length of a century the Frankish state 
had been led by three princes of unusual capacity, Karl Martel, 
Pepin, and Charlemagne. Under their leadership the Frank¬ 
ish state reached the climax of its political development. An¬ 
other century, 814-918, saw the complete disintegration of the 
structure, a process sometimes called the “fall” of the Frankish 
empire. As in the case of Rome, there was no fall. It was simply 
an evolution into new forms. 

In quite a different sense, too, there was no “fall” of the 
Frankish empire. For even at its height there had been some¬ 
thing artificial about it. The forces of disintegration at work 
within and without had been dominated indeed, but they had 
not been destroyed by the three great Carolingians. Even be¬ 
fore the death of Charlemagne there was evidence that the 
scourge of invasions was about to commence again. Feudalizing 
tendencies had been merely regulated, moreover, not reversed. 

Divisions in the Frankish State 

Charlemagne’s successors were not supermen like himself 
nor, on the other hand, were they weak men. Furthermore,' 
they had to struggle with forces so formidable as to have strained 
to the breaking point the energy and resourcefulness of Charle¬ 
magne himself. 

For some years after Charlemagne’s death there was no evi¬ 
dence of impending peril for his empire. He left a son in undis¬ 
puted possession of all his dominions. This son, Louis, was a 
tall, handsome, athletic man of thirty-six. His surname, the 
Pious, was a contemporary one indeed, but Louis was no mere 
“crowned monk.” He was a man of more formal learning and 

160 


DECLINE OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE 


161 


of more bookish habit than his father; he was more diligent, 
too, in pious exercises, and as fully devoted to the interests 
of the church as his father had been. He was, moreover, a 
welcome contrast to Charlemagne in the strictness of his pri¬ 
vate life. One of his first acts was to cleanse the royal court, 
four of his sisters, long accustomed to a dissolute life, being 
banished from the royal presence. The new emperor’s greatest 
vice, in view of the needs and dangers of his time, would be 
esteemed a virtue in a happier age. He was too gentle and com¬ 
passionate with his enemies. 

Louis’s reign was only a few years old when there appeared 
the first of the disintegrating forces which were destined to 
destroy the Frankish empire. In the year 817 Louis resolved to 
make arrangements for the succession. He himself had been 
crowned during the lifetime of his father and had reigned for 
some years as a colleague. Louis had three sons, Lothair, Louis, 
and Pepin. Lothair now received the title of emperor and ruled 
as his father’s colleague. Louis was made king of Bavaria and 
its dependencies; he is known in history as Louis the German. 
Pepin became king of Aquitaine and its dependencies. It will 
be recognized that the arrangements of 817 revived, after a 
happy century of neglect, the old and evil Frankish custom of 
dividing the dominions of the king among his sons. Unluckily, 
the Frankish kings who followed Charlemagne seldom failed to 
have three or four sons apiece. One needs little imagination and 
the smallest facility in mental arithmetic to picture what the 
revival of the custom of division might mean for the Frankish 
empire in the course of three or four generations. 

Having begun so badly in 817, the emperor made matters 
worse by his second marriage. His first wife dying in 818, 
Louis was persuaded to rally from his despairing grief at length 
and to choose another bride. He selected Judith, a beautiful 
and accomplished Suabian princess of much personal charm 
and even, we are asked to believe, of considerable learning. The 
new empress was also possessed of no little force. In 823 she 
bore a son, Charles, later known by the title, ungracious to 
our ears, of Charles the Bald. From the moment of the birth 
of this son to the day of the emperor’s death, in 840, the political 


162 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


history of the reign is that of the efforts of the new empress to 
secure a portion of the Frankish dominions for her son, and of 
the efforts of the other sons of Louis the Pious to maintain 
their own shares intact. A group of selfish and land-hungry 
bishops and nobles attached themselves to each of the three 
older sons, hoping to secure honors and benefices from them. 
With the aid of these insubordinate magnates the emperor him¬ 
self was deposed, for a time. To secure the throne again Louis 
was compelled to undergo the extraordinary humiliation of 
assuming the garb of a penitent and publicly confessing himself 
guilty of perjury and homicide. It was enough to make his 
dead father turn in his grave. 

We may see here, sharing in the victory of the three sons, 
another factor working for the disintegration of the Frankish 
empire, namely, the feudal nobility. The growth in power and 
independence of the great landed nobles is one of the features 
of the age. Two years after the humiliation of the emperor, in 
834, a third disintegrating force appeared, for in that year 
Scandinavian pirates began their forays, plundering and burn¬ 
ing the coasts of Frisia. In 835 they sacked Utrecht, the capital 
of Frisia; in 836 they burned Antwerp, capital of Flanders. The 
emperor Louis advanced against them and the pirates retreated; 
but “they had spied out the nakedness of the land”, and were 
destined to return again and again. 

Meanwhile Pepin, the third son, had died and so Charles, the 
youngest son, was provided for with the dead brother’s share. 
Shortly after this came the death of Louis the Pious. We can¬ 
not acquit this son of Charlemagne of weakness, but surely the 
circumstances of his reign were most adverse. 

On the death of his father, Lothair the new emperor claimed 
the whole of the Frankish dominions, thus attempting to reduce 
his two brothers to the status of vassal kings. Louis and Charles 
stoutly resisted this move. They found it easy to attach a 
considerable number of the landed magnates to their cause. 
It should be pointed out, however, that all through the century 
the bishops and other leading ecclesiastics were usually to be 
found supporting the central government. It was the lay barons, 
in general, who supported the pretensions of the local kings 


DECLINE OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE 


163 


throughout the period. Nor is this surprising, for the local kings 
usually took the trouble to secure the loyalty of the barons 
by lavish distribution of honors and benefices. 

Oath of Strassbourg 

Threatened by the centralizing policy of Lothair, the two 
brothers, Louis the German and Charles the Bald, became 
allies. They defeated Lothair at Fontenay in 841. In the fol¬ 
lowing year the victorious brothers had a conclave at Strass¬ 
bourg and in the presence of their followers each took an oath 
of mutual aid. These oaths are famous as the earliest sur¬ 
viving specimens of Teutonic and Romance speech. That he 
might be understood by the followers of his brother Louis, 
Charles took the oath in German, as follows: “In Godes minna 
ind in thes christanes folches ind unser bedhero gehaltnissi, forr 
thesemo dage frammordes, so frain so mir Got gewizci ind mahd 
furgibit. . . Likewise, that the followers of Charles might 
understand him, Louis said the same thing in their language: 
“Pro Deo amur et pro Christian poblo et nostro commun slava- 
ment, dist di in avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, 
si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Carlo. . . 

Treaty of Verdun 

The two brothers then advanced upon Lothair, whose fol¬ 
lowers melted away, compelling him to come to terms. The 
terms are famous as the Treaty of Verdun (843 a.d.). This 
treaty not only marks a decisive step in the dissolution of the 
Frankish empire, but it also marks the beginning of modern 
nations. Charles the Bald got Neustria, Aquitaine, western 
Burgundy, and the Spanish March. Thus he ruled almost 
exclusively peoples who spoke Romance tongues. Louis got all 
the Teutonic parts of the empire except Austrasia, that is, 
Bavaria, Saxony, Franconia, and their dependencies. Lothair 
kept Italy, Provence, eastern Burgundy, and Austrasia, a narrow 
strip about a thousand miles long and one hundred and thirty 
miles wide stretching from southern Italy to the North Sea. 
The inhabitants of this central strip spoke different languages 
and were of many different “nationalities”, but the strip con- 


164 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


tained both the German and the Roman capitals. The two 
younger brothers recognized the elder’s title of emperor but 
denied that that title gave him any superiority over them. 
Thus was Charlemagne’s empire rent asunder. 

Almost at once began the struggle, now many centuries old, 
of the eastern and western kings over the middle kingdom. The 
emperor Lothair died in 855 leaving three sons, each of whom 
got a slice of his dominions. To Louis II went Italy and the 
title of emperor; to Charles, Provence and Burgundy; and to 
Lothair II, Austrasia, that is, the old home of the Franks 
between the Rhine and the Scheldt. This last is the fa¬ 
miliar Lotharii regnum or Lorraine. Here lay the bulk of the 
crown lands of the Carolingians. Eagerness to get a share of 
this enormously valuable property of the royal house explains 
the ferocity with which the later Carolingians of the eastern 
and western kingdoms struggled over Lorraine. Later on, France 
and Germany took up the struggle. Thus the battle ground of 
the Carolingian kinglets became the battle ground of nations. 
“The history of modern Europe is an exposition of the Treaty 
of Verdun.” 1 


Raids of the Northmen 

It is time we examined more fully the destructive forces 
which we have seen at work in the Frankish empire during the 
ninth century. Undoubtedly the most menacing of these was 
the renewal of invasions. On the north and west were North¬ 
men, on the south, Saracens, on the east, Slavs and Hungarians. 
The story of the invasions of Northmen and Saracens is a part 
of the history of their European expansion, which will be more 
fully considered in the chapters which follow. We may note 
here the way the expansion of these peoples is related to the 
disintegration of the Frankish empire. As we have seen, the 
Northmen began their attacks on Frisia and Flanders in the 
later years of the reign of Louis the Pious. Summer after sum¬ 
mer they pushed their raids farther south. In 843, the year of 
the Treaty of Verdun, these pirates rowed their long, narrow 
boats up the Loire to Nantes, where they slew the bishop at the 

1 Palgrave, quoted by Wm. Edwards, Notes on European History , I, 46. 


DECLINE OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE 


165 


altar. Two years later they pushed up the Seine, and King 
Charles the Bald was obliged to buy them off. Meeting little 
effective resistance, the raiders became bolder and bolder and 
began to pass their winters in the southland, establishing them¬ 
selves as a great army in a fortified camp. From one such base 
in Flanders they raided and burned, at their leisure, Cologne, 
Liege, Bonn, and Aachen. The government was powerless to 
drive them out. Men everywhere sought protection of local 
strong men and commended themselves and their lands to them 
in a feudal relationship. The desperate character of the situation 
is indicated by the fact that in 884 it took a bribe of 14,000 
pounds of silver to buy off one of these Norse armies. 

Diverted, thus, from Gaul, the Northmen turned to England 
for a time. In England, however, they met with stiff resistance, 
the resistance which gives Alfred the Great his chief claim to 
fame, that of having saved Anglo-Saxon civilization from en¬ 
tire destruction. Driven from Wessex, the army renewed its at¬ 
tack on Gaul. A very large expedition pushed up the Seine 
in 885. It is estimated that this raid was participated in by 
40,000 men in more than 300 boats. They occupied Rouen 
and then continued on to Paris. For eleven months they un¬ 
dertook the siege of Paris. The defense of the city on this oc¬ 
casion is perhaps the most famous event of the century. It 
was undertaken by the local count and the bishop. Walls had 
been built around Paris some time earlier, though the city 
was then confined to the “ Island of the City,” with suburbs 
on either bank of the stream. Count Odo maintained a stout 
and in the end a successful resistance. The Northmen were com¬ 
pelled to drag their boats out of the water and launch them 
again above the city, in order to continue their raids into Bur¬ 
gundy. The fame won by Count Odo in his defense of Paris 
laid the foundation for the prestige of his family, which was 
eventually to succeed the Carolingians as the royal house of 
France. 


Attacks of Moslem Pirates 

Hardly less terrible or less formidable than the Northmen 
were the Moslem pirates to the south. Their bases were in 


166 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Africa and in Spain. For a century Moslem pirates were as great 
a scourge to Italy as the Northmen were to Gaul. They at¬ 
tacked Sicily in 827, almost the same date as the first Norse at¬ 
tack on Frisia. The Moslems were soon masters of Sicily. 
Thence they turned to the mainland. 'Naples was too strongly 
defended, so the Saracens pushed northwards to the Tiber. 
Unable to take the walled city of Rome, they attacked the 
church of St. Peter's, which was on the right bank outside the 
walls, and profaned the tomb of the Apostle (846). A thrill of 
horror ran through western Europe at the news of this sacrilege. 
Pope Leo IV was led by this disaster to build a wall on the right 
bank of the Tiber, to enclose the basilica of St. Peter’s and the 
quarters around it. This walled enclosure was famous through 
the middle ages as the Leonine City, and it corresponds more or 
less closely to the limits of Vatican City to-day. Year by year 
the Saracens consolidated their hold on Sicily and southern 
Italy, plundering, among other strongholds, the famous monas¬ 
tery of Monte Cassino. 

Slavs and Hungarians 

On the eastern frontier of the Frankish empire were Slavs 
and Hungarians. The latter have been called the most terrible 
scourge of the Germans. The Hungarians were of Asiatic origin. 
They had been driven from their earlier settlements between the 
Don and Dneiper and had established themselves on the banks 
of the Theiss. Toward the end of the ninth century they began 
to ravage and pillage in Bavaria. Encouraged by the lack of 
resistance and the ease of plunder they returned year by year, 
penetrating farther and farther to the north, northwest, and 
southwest. Saxony, Suabia, and Alsace suffered from their 
incursions in the early years of the tenth century. The Hungari¬ 
ans were splendidly mounted and were formidable fighters, 
using the familiar nomad method of attack. 

Growth of Feudalism 

The continuous civil wars among the Carolingian kinglets 
and the devastating incursions of marauding pirates by land 
and sea furnished conditions of life ideal for the land-hungry 


DECLINE OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE 


167 


nobles. Each kinglet was compelled to impoverish himself 
to satisfy the demands of his vassals, for he knew only too well 
that they would transfer their allegiance to a rival at a moment’s 
notice. Most of the lands so granted came out of the crown lands, 
or that portion of them in the possession of the Carolingian 
king in question. A contemporary writer says of these lavish 
gifts of lands, “ Never either in ancient books or in modern 
times [the use of the word modern in the ninth century is worth 
observing] was such royal prodigality known.” 1 Thus the 
feudal nobles grew stronger and stronger through the grants 
of the Carolingian kings themselves. 

Furthermore, men everywhere were compelled by the con¬ 
stant menace to life and property from invasion to seek the 
protection of the local magnates, as we have seen. The central 
government was helpless. Local leaders were needed every¬ 
where to organize resistance to the fierce marauders. The 
Frankish kings of the period were constrained to encourage 
this feudalizing process in order to gather an army. A capitulary 
of 847 is famous in this connection. It ordered every freeman to 
choose a lord, since the latter had the duty of leading his men to 
war. Thus did the central government surrender to feudalism. 

Meanwhile the Frankish custom of dividing the kingdom 
among the king’s sons continued. We have seen that the em¬ 
pire of Louis the Pious was divided among his three sons; and 
that the middle kingdom of Lothair was divided at his death 
among his three sons. Similarly, when Louis the German died, 
in 876, his kingdom of the East Franks was divided among 
his three sons, Carloman getting the duchy of Bavaria and its 
east mark, Louis receiving the duchies of Saxony and Franconia, 
and Charles, surnamed the Fat, getting Alemannia (Suabia). 
Thus, while feudalism was working for disintegration from 
below, Frankish custom worked for it from above, and the 
scourge of invasion hastened both processes. 

How far would political disintegration go? It would proceed 
until stopped by integrating forces. A balance of forces must 
be reached eventually. What were the integrating forces? 
Among them was local sentiment, based upon and working 

1 Cited by J. W. Thompson, op. tit., p. 242. 


168 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


through a common language and common institutions and 
finding a common leadership in defense. Local sentiment might 
center about a count or a duke. In the more German parts of 
the Frankish dominions an ancient “national ” tradition survived, 
as in Saxony, Bavaria, and elsewhere. Another integrating force 
was the Carolingian name and fame and the kingly office which 
the Carolingian kings had made glorious. Even when there were 
no more Carolingians capable of ruling, the glamor of the royal 
office attached itself to the new families which came forward. 

Elimination of the Carolingians 

In the kingdom of the East Franks the Carolingian line dis¬ 
appeared first. The last of the line here was Louis the Child, 
who died in 911, aged 18. Local sentiment remained strong 
here and even increased during the period of weakness of the 
ninth century. The dukes of Franconia, Suabia, Bavaria, and 
Saxony stood forth as the most powerful of the feudal vassals. 
On the death of Louis the Child these dukes met and elected 
one of their own number, Conrad of Franconia, as king. It 
was a bad choice. Conrad proved unable to protect the kingdom 
from the Hungarians or even to command the respect of his 
fellow dukes. Dying in 918, he recommended the election of 
Henry, duke of Saxony. With this election the history of Ger¬ 
many may be said to begin, for Henry founded the first great 
dynasty of German kings. 

In the kingdom of the West Franks the Carolingian line lived 
longer; its struggle for life was long drawn out. Here the Caro¬ 
lingians were faced with the claims of a rival family from among 
their own magnates. That family was founded by Count Robert 
the Strong and his son Odo, famous for his defense of Paris 
against the Northmen. These counts of Paris were unusually 
successful in the troublous times we have been studying. The 
head of the house became marquis of Neustria, that is, suzerain 
of all the counties between Normandy and Brittany, the Loire 
and the Seine, with the vague title of “Duke of the Franks.” 
The wealth and power of the counts of Paris were further in¬ 
creased by their habit of naming themselves titular heads of 
the rich abbeys of their domains. No less than eight abbeys 


DECLINE OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE 


169 


were so held, including those of St. Denis and St. Martin of 
Tours. 

The western Carolingians were forced almost to denude them¬ 
selves of land in their anxiety to attach the other feudal mag¬ 
nates to themselves, and in a day when the private wealth of 
the king was his main resource this policy was well-nigh fatal. 
In the contest between the two houses, which lasted over a 
century, the pope was frequently called upon by each side. On 
the whole, the church stood with the Carolingians so long as 
any hope remained of their bringing unity to the western king¬ 
dom. The last hope expired when Louis V (986-987), the seventh 
generation in direct male descent from Charlemagne, was acci¬ 
dentally killed at the age of nineteen. An assembly of bishops 
and magnates met after his death, under the leadership of the 
archbishop of Rheims. It was decided to bestow the royal 
title on count Hugh Capet, duke of the Franks. “If Louis of 
divine memory had left children, it would have been fitting 
that they should succeed him,” said the archbishop. Failing 
direct heirs, however, the archbishop nominated Hugh, “a man 
distinguished for valor, wisdom, and honor.” Thus ended the 
Carolingians of the west, and thus began the famous house of 
Capet, which, directly or through collateral heirs, was destined 
to rule over France for nearly a thousand years. 

For Further Reading 

E. Emerton, Mediaeval Europe, chaps. 9 and 10 
T. F. Tout, Empire and Papacy, chaps. 2, 3, and 4 
J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 
chap. 9 

-, Feudal Germany 

Cambridge Mediaeval History, III, chaps. 1, 2, and 3 



CHAPTER THIRTEEN 


ENTER THE NORTHMEN 

Early Home 

“Northmen” is a generic term for four peoples, Norwegians, 
Goths, Swedes, and Danes. When they began to play a part 
in the drama of European history they dwelt in the Danish 
and Scandinavian peninsulas. Neither of these regions is well 
suited for human habitation. Both are inhospitable to a high 
degree and afford, under primitive conditions of agriculture 
and industry, but scant livelihood for even the sparsest popu¬ 
lation. The peninsula of Denmark is a low-lying sand spit 
covered with a dense growth of timber and underbrush, with 
only here and there a clearing and soil suitable for cultivation. 
The coast is much indented by bays and arms of the sea, on the 
shore of which the Danes chiefly dwelt in small villages. The 
chief support of the Danes, therefore, was not agriculture but 
fishing, trade, and piracy. 

The Scandinavian peninsula is utterly different physically, 
but no more hospitable than the Danish. The backbone of the 
peninsula is a mountain range, fringed by a narrow coast. This 
fringe of coast afforded a home to the Norse inhabitants. The 
thin soil offered no great encouragement to the agriculturist, 
but the very numerous indentations of the coast, the famous 
fiords, afforded shelter for numerous small seafaring commu¬ 
nities. Each fiord was usually dominated by a local leader or 
jarl who, in the period of raids abroad or of fighting at home, 
was elected king. When we recall that the old Norse word for 
fiord was “vik” we may easily see the derivation of “viking.” 

Norse Boats 

In the ninth century a.d. the Northmen had just emerged 
from the Bronze Age. Material civilization among them was 
primitive. They had achieved, however, a remarkable skill in 

170 


ENTER THE NORTHMEN 


171 


boat building and in the fashioning of weapons. Their boats 
were long, narrow, and undecked, about four feet deep and 
sixty feet long, carrying about 100 persons. In the heyday of 
the Norse raids in the south, against England or Gaul, a fleet 
of 350 such boats was not unknown. Each boat was propelled 
by oars, sixteen to a side, the free warriors doing the rowing. 
A sort of king oar served for a rudder. When favored with a 
following wind a single sail was hoisted, brightly colored. 
“Over the low waist of the brightly painted ship hung a line 
of round shields, yellow and black alternately. The high dragon 
prow broke the billows in front, a terror to Christian folk who 
saw it coming.” 1 During the period of the Viking raids larger 
boats were built. We hear of certain famous “dragon boats” 
with thirty-four and even sixty-four pairs of oars. In their 
long open boats the Norse pirates, with amazing venturesome¬ 
ness and skill, searched out and attacked the coasts of Gaul, 
Spain, Italy, the British Isles, and, if we are to credit a per¬ 
sistent tradition, they even pushed westward to the coasts of 
North America. 


Military Methods 

The Norsemen were excellently armed with weapons of iron. 
A long two-handled battle axe was the principal weapon for 
offence, though they also used the bow and arrow on occasion. 
For defense they used the round shield and, what gave them 
a great advantage over their antagonists, they wore mail 
shirts as body armor. They were very skilled in tactics also. 
Upon landing when out on a raid, for they were not sea fighters, 
the Vikings would frequently sweep up all the horses in the 
neighborhood and convert themselves into “horse marines”. 
When fighting was the order of the day they dismounted and 
fought on foot, using a wedge-shaped formation. If surrounded 
by greatly superior numbers, they would dig themselves in, for 
they were skilled at earthworks. There they would wait until 
the peasant army sent against them had melted away to their 
homes. Siege craft, also, the Northmen had developed to a 
high point of perfection, using the mine and the mangonel. All 

1 G. M. Trevelyan, History of England, p. 77. 


172 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


in all, these northern raiders were terribly efficient fighters. No 
one of the Christian “civilized” peoples of the south could 
stand up to them, not until they had learned from the invaders 
their art of fighting and copied their weapons, at any rate. 
King Alfred of England, for instance, copied Norse methods 
and this partly explains his conspicuous success against them, 
as we shall see. The feudal castle and the armored knight were 
both, in large part, by-products of the raids of the Northmen. 

Plundering Raids 

We may distinguish two periods in the history of the Euro¬ 
pean invasions of the Northmen. First, there was a period of 
plundering raids, lasting a century, during which the doings of 
the Northmen constituted the “greatest romance of history”. 
Secondly, there was a period of popular migration, which also 
lasted a century. The period of plundering raids began towards 
the close of the eighth century. The first attack of which we 
have knowledge was on the British Isles in 787; it is recorded 
in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle . The Frankish dominions felt 
the attacks of the Northmen before the death of Charlemagne 
in all probability. Certainly the Franks were familiar enough 
with them before the death of Louis the Pious. The earliest 
mention of the famous city of Antwerp is of its being burned 
by the Northmen, in 836. In the year 845 the raiders plundered 
Paris. Year by year they pushed farther and farther south¬ 
ward, entering every river and pushing far into the interior. 
It has been pointed out that “the physical topography both 
of eastern England and of northern and western France made 
them peculiarly vulnerable to these rovers. ... In France 
where, with the exception of the Garonne, the rivers radiate 
like spokes from a hub and where in the center the waters of 
the Upper Seine, the Upper Loire, the Upper Meuse, and the 
Upper Saone are not many leagues apart, the Norsemen moved 
almost at will, penetrating far up the rivers and even dragging 
their boats overland, coming up one stream and going down 
another.” 1 

All the important towns on these rivers and along the coast 

1 J. W. Thompson, op. cit., p. 273. 


ENTER THE NORTHMEN 


173 


were plundered, some of them again and again, during the 
ninth century. By 845 the Northmen had reached Spain, 
attacking Seville in that year. Fifteen years later, in 860, they 
had reached Italy and attacked Pisa. Their raids were terribly 
destructive, for these pagans were “bloody-minded pirates out 
to kill”. They quickly learned that monasteries, churches, and 
especially cathedrals were rich in booty. They slew bishops at 
the altar and abbots in their cells, for the terrors of Christian 
damnation left them cold. Unable to resist, the Christian com¬ 
munities of the West sought to buy off the pirates with gold. 
We have already seen this plan in use among the Franks, and 
we shall see it again in England under the name of Danegeld. 

While the salt-water pirates among the Northmen were 
pushing southward into the Mediterranean, fresh-water pirates, 
as we might call them, were pushing southward through Russia, 
following the water courses from the Gulf of Finland to the 
Black Sea. The Norse leader Rurik founded a dynasty in 
northern Russia in 862. Reaching the Black Sea, the Northmen 
attacked Constantinople, though vainly. Thus they had “put 
a girdle round Europe”, by sea and by land. Meanwhile others 
of these restless and intrepid adventurers were faring westward, 
as we have seen. They reached Iceland in 874, Greenland in 
981, and Vinland (America) in the year 1000(?). Iceland and 
Greenland are possessions of Denmark at the present time; the 
former celebrated its millennium in 1874. 

Permanent Settlements in Europe 

The century of plundering raids was followed by a century 
of popular migration and settlement, “the last great change in 
the population of western Europe until the expulsion of the 
Moors from Spain.” Fundamentally, no doubt, the cause of 
this mass migration was over-population, a problem acute in 
Scandinavia by the middle of the ninth century. It will be 
recognized that even a slight increase in population there would 
cause serious trouble. The weaker jarls and their followers 
would be pushed into the sea. A more immediate cause of 
migration was political, that is, the centralizing policy of the 
more powerful jarls. Especially noteworthy was the battle of 


174 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Hafrsfjord, in 872, in which Harold Fairhair won a great victory 
over his rivals. “ Scores of chieftains fled the war, taking with 
them their wives, chattels, slaves, freeborn and bonded fol¬ 
lowers, household goods and gear, everything that could be put 
on board a ship.” 1 After this the prowling Northmen could 
neither be bought off nor fought off. They must have land. In 
876 came the Treaty of Wedmore between Alfred of England 
and Guthrum of the Danes, in which the whole east coast of 
Britain, from the Thames’ mouth north to the Tees on the 
border of Northumberland, was resigned to the invaders. The 
number of free warriors with their families and households who 
settled in this “Danelaw” must have been very considerable, 
to judge from the influence which this region has had on the 
language and institutions of England. About the same time a 
Danish “kingdom” was founded in Ireland, at Dublin, which 
lasted until early in the eleventh century. The migration to 
Ireland was not so important as it was to England, hence the 
permanent influence of the Northmen on Ireland was relatively 
small. 

In the year 912 came the famous treaty between the emperor 
Charles the Simple and Rollo, chief of the Northmen in Gaul. 
This was signed at St. Claire-sur-Epte, on the road from Rouen 
to Paris. By this treaty Rollo received the counties of Rouen, 
Lisieux, and Evreux, with the whole coast from the mouth of 
the Bresle to the edge of Brittany. The Norse “army” had 
been settled in this region for some years, using it as a base of 
operations; the treaty of 912 merely regularized matters. Fur¬ 
thermore, by inducing Rollo and his followers to accept Chris¬ 
tianity the Frankish emperor hoped to stop their destructive 
raids and even to convert them into allies. Even so had Rome 
dealt with the incursions of the barbarians five hundred years 
earlier. The treaty of Charles and Rollo laid the foundations 
of the duchy of Normandy, the greatest Norman colony ever 
founded. From it went forth in later generations leaders of 
Viking blood to found dynasties in England, Scotland, Wales, 
Ireland, southern Italy and Sicily, Spain, and even in far-off 
Syria. Lastly, a “Normandy” was founded at Novgorod and 

1 Quoted by J. W. Thompson, op. dt., p. 276. 


ENTER THE NORTHMEN 


175 


Kiev in the heart of Russia. These Russian settlements were 
of great importance as stages along the Norse highway of 
commerce between the eastern Mediterranean and the north¬ 
west of Europe. 

Commercial Importance of the Northmen 

The Norse invasions, somewhat paradoxically, brought about 
a considerable revival of commerce in western Europe. The 
two centuries of the Carolingians had been a time of retrogres¬ 
sion, commercially, and this for two reasons. First, the Frank¬ 
ish state was almost exclusively an agricultural one, with a land- 
holding aristocracy living self-sufficiently on their farms, having 
neither the taste nor the commodities for trade. Secondly, 
Mohammedan pirates had established a complete control of 
the western Mediterranean during these two centuries, thus 
closing it to Christian commerce. The situation is sufficiently 
revealed by the fact that Marseilles, a prosperous port through¬ 
out the Roman period and even earlier under the Greeks, disap¬ 
peared from history for two centuries. The rise of the maritime 
cities of Italy in the eleventh century and the opening of the 
Near East to western traders by the Crusades during the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries were destined to restore the old high¬ 
way of the Mediterranean to something like its former pros¬ 
perity. From the ninth century to the eleventh century, how¬ 
ever, was the period of Norse supremacy in commerce. The 
Northmen opened up a great new highway of trade, the famous 
Varangian route. This ran from the Baltic Sea by way of the 
Gulf of Finland, the Volkhov river, and the Dnieper river, to 
the Black Sea. Thence it continued to Constantinople, Syria, 
and Egypt. Kiev on the Dnieper was the most important 
entrepot for this trade, and Novgorod on the Volkhov has been 
called the “Venice of the north.” Northern and northwestern 
centers were Danzig, Stettin, Liibeck, Hamburg, Bruges, and 
London. Exports of the north included furs, amber, whalebone 
and whale oil, and walrus ivory, while the trade of the 
Orient included the familiar luxury-articles of silk, spices, 
and sugar. 

In thinking of the Northmen as traders it will help us to 


176 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


remember that there was no clear distinction between the Norse 
merchants and the Norse warriors. When visiting a foreign 
land these trader-warriors would often arrange for a definite 
time for trade, with the stipulation that once trading was over 
the parties to the compact would be free to treat each other 
as enemies. It is essential, also, that we should realize that 
through their settlements in Russia, England, France, and Italy 
the Northmen had established a veritable “ empire ”, stretching 
from Greenland to the Black and Caspian seas, one of the most 
considerable empires in European history. This empire was 
not a political one, for the numerous colonies were quite inde¬ 
pendent of each other, as they were of the mother country. 
It was a commercial empire. Its highways were all waterways, 
fresh or salt. The Norse merchants made their way with their 
wares through the length and breadth of their vast empire in 
perfect safety; for they were military merchants, quite able to 
protect their wares as well as their lives. Moreover, the Norse 
empire had the bond of union of a common language; for how¬ 
ever Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish may differ, they can 
readily be understood by those who speak any one of the three. 
“Denmark, Sweden, Norway, England, Northern France, the 
‘Kingdom of Dublin’, Iceland, the Orkneys, Shetlands, Faroes, 
Kurland, Russia, even Greenland, were as provinces in one 
vague and vast Norse empire in the tenth and eleventh cen¬ 
turies which had the intangible unity that Anglo-Saxondom 
has to-day.” 1 

Cultural Importance of the Northmen 

It remains to note certain cultural influences contributed 
by the Northmen to European life and civilization. Their 
most striking characteristic when settled among conquered 
peoples was their assimilative power. They adapted themselves 
to others and they adapted others to themselves. In France 
they became French, in England, English, in Italy, Italian, 
in Ireland, Irish, and in Russia, Russian. Perhaps the most 
striking of numerous individual examples is that of an English¬ 
man, born of Norman stock, who became the leader of Scotch 

1 J. W. Thompson, op. dt., p. 282. 


ENTER THE NORTHMEN 


177 


independence and the founder of the Scotch dynasty,—Robert 
Bruce. When settled in western Europe the Norse quickly 
took to Christianity and threw themselves into the Christian 
life of the day with the greatest zeal, becoming the most devout 
people of Europe. Rouen, Normandy’s capital, became known 
as la ville de cent eglises. The Danelaw, in England, experienced 
a monastic revival in the tenth century. Norman Italy and 
Sicily supported the progressive pope Gregory VII in his Cluniac 
Reformation, later on. Great wanderers before conversion, 
the Normans became great pilgrims. Norman princes and barons 
were the prime figures in the First Crusade. 

Further, the Northmen had fine political ability. They were 
born organizers and leaders, fusing varied racial stocks into 
a single stock and organizing divergent local customs into a 
single harmonious law. It is not without significance that our 
word “law”, which replaced both the Roman “lex” and the 
Saxon “doom”, is a Danish word, and that the first mention 
of the jury system in England was in the Danelaw (c. 1000 
a.d.). The duchy of Normandy became the best organized 
fief of France. Norman institutions of central government 
introduced into England at the Conquest gave England a 
single central law emanating from and administered by the 
king, the first such legal system in Europe. 

Besides their assimilative power and their political skill, 
the Northmen made important contributions to European litera¬ 
ture. In their own language they had one of the finest litera¬ 
tures of Europe, the famous “Saga” literature. This consisted 
of a cycle of legends embodying their adventures. These legends 
were transmitted orally for many centuries. They were com¬ 
mitted to writing, finally, in the middle of the thirteenth century, 
in Iceland, then the literary center of the Scandinavian world. 
The Sagas are absolutely untouched by Christianity and unin¬ 
fluenced by classical culture, whether Greek or Roman. They 
represent “the last articulate voice of Teutonic heathenism”. 
The Sagas have frequently been translated into English, some 
of them by Longfellow. The Northman was a poet by nature 
and did not lose his poetic gift when he became a Christian. 
The two great Romance cycles of the middle ages, the Arthurian 


178 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


and the Carolingian, are attributed originally to Norman poets 
working in Celtic and Latin traditions and introducing inci¬ 
dents from their own Sagas. 

For Further Reading 

C. H. Haskins, The Normans in European History 
Cambridge Mediaeval History, III, chap. 13 

J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 
chap. 10 

A. Mawer, The Vikings 

C. F. Keary, The Vikings in Western Christendom 

C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, vol. II 

C. W. C. Oman, England before the Norman Conquest, pp. 382-491 

Mary W. Williams, Social Scandinavia in the Viking Age 

G. Vigfusson (ed.), Sturlinga Saga 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 


MOHAMMEDANISM SPREADS WESTWARD 

Arabia and the Arabs 

In the East, as in the West, the middle ages began with 
the rise of a new religion and an era of invasions. The invaders, 
making their way westward through North Africa and crossing 
into southern Italy, Sicily, and Spain, brought western Europe 
into renewed and prolonged contact with ancient culture through 
a period when other close contact was lacking. 

The new religion was Mohammedanism, and its home was 
Arabia. Bounded by the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the 
Persian Gulf, Arabia is, in effect, a peninsula. It is about one- 
third as large as the United States. The relative isolation, 
due to its peninsular shape, is intensified by the nature of the 
interior, not more than half of which has ever been seen by 
a European, even to-day. For the most part the interior of 
Arabia is a broad and elevated table-land of waterless and tree¬ 
less desert, a land of barren sand and rocks, reflecting the blaz¬ 
ing sun. Scattered through this broad table-land, however, are 
depressions into which water drains after the infrequent rains. 
In these depressions trees grow and pasture may be had by 
flocks and herds, though the grass is sparse and easily ex¬ 
hausted, and here, too, man may find water in the sandy soil with¬ 
out excessive digging. Such are the oases. The western, southern, 
and eastern borders of the peninsula are fringed with low-lying 
hills whose slopes are somewhat more favorable to human life 
than is the interior. Further, these coastal hills are indented with 
valleys of fertile land, well watered, in which fields, gardens, and 
towns appear. Northward the desert is bounded by Palestine, 
Syria, and Mesopotamia, the edge of the Fertile Crescent. 

It will be recognized that the human stock of Arabia can 
never have been numerous. Furthermore, the life of the desert 
Arabs, or Bedouins, has always been pastoral and nomadic. 

179 


180 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Their flocks and herds furnished the wandering tribes with 
food and clothing. They traded with the town-dwellers of the 
green borderlands for weapons, spices, jewels, pottery, and 
cereals. To live they had to be continually on the move, for 
the pasture of an oasis is quickly exhausted. Food was always 
scarce. Even a few extra mouths became a serious matter. 
War between the small desert groups was incessant. The study 
and practice of the art of war was as necessary a part of their 
means of living as that of scientific agriculture is to the modern 
farmer. Further, this way of life, imposed upon the Arabs by 
nature, is not susceptible of improvement. As they live in in¬ 
ner Arabia to-day so they lived in remote centuries. Nor have 
peoples from without ever been able to impress their civiliza¬ 
tion upon these desert Arabs. “Neither Assyria, nor Persia, 
nor Rome, neither the Turk nor the imperialism of Modern 
Europe has altogether subdued the desert folk or imposed upon 
them a different mode of living and a new outlook upon life.” 1 
Attack the Arabs in overwhelming numbers and they will flee to 
the inner fastnesses of their land, taking their flocks and herds, 
all their livelihood and wealth, with them. There armies cannot 
live, and there the Arabs alone know the way from oasis to oasis. 

War, then, was a state of mind among the Arabs. The climate 
is stimulating, and warlike activity seemed a natural outlet. To 
raid an oasis, to plunder a caravan, or even, upon occasion, to 
make a foray into the borderlands, was a constant temptation. 
It is clear, further, that no very elaborate social system would 
be likely to develop. The Arabs remained in a primitive tribal 
stage of social organization; the units were kept small, thus 
affording the greatest hope of survival. Their religions life, 
moreover, was not well developed or well organized. The Arab 
placed a great deal of reliance upon himself, as was only natural. 
He had many gods, chiefly nature-gods. There seems to have 
been a very general recognition of Allah, on the part of all 
Arabs, as being a god who was superior to all others, in whose 
name the most solemn oaths were sworn and treaties signed. 
In the borderlands Judaism, Christianity, and the Persian re¬ 
ligion had much influence. 

1 J. K. Wright, Geographical Basis of European History , p. 11. 


MOHAMMEDANISM SPREADS WESTWARD 


181 


Mohammed 

Mohammed, founder of the Mohammedan religion and uni¬ 
fier of the Arab state, was born about the year 570 a.d. Little 
is known of his youth, but his life as a boy was probably one of 
comparative hardship, since he was poor. When he was just 
coming to manhood Mohammed entered the service of a wealthy 
widow named Kadijah, who was some years older than him¬ 
self. He made journeys for his employer into the Fertile Cres¬ 
cent, to the west and north. This was an unusual opportunity 
for the young Mohammed to educate himself by travel, and with 
his active and sensitive mind he took the fullest advantage of 
it. He seems to have had much talk with Jews, Christians, 
Greeks, and others, on religious matters. For Mohammed was 
an unusual Arab, much given to quiet meditation and dreamy 
reflection in solitude. It may be that his slight physique 
bred in him a distaste for action. Ultimately he married his 
rich employer, and this gave Mohammed more freedom to in¬ 
dulge his taste for meditation. His marriage also made him a 
person of comparative importance in Mecca, a community of 
Bedouins not far from the Red Sea, now become Mohammed’s 
“home town.” Gradually he began to think out his religious 
system. His soul revolted against the crude fetish-worship of 
his contemporaries, and his sensitive refined nature recoiled 
from the primitive morals and customs of his Bedouin neigh¬ 
bors. Mohammed came to have a deep conviction of his mis¬ 
sion as a prophet of the One True God. There can be no doubt 
of his sincerity. 

His own family were Mohammed’s first converts. When he 
attacked the heathen shrines of Mecca, however, the mer¬ 
chants and others who profited by the pilgrimages thither made 
the town too hot for Mohammed and he fled, with his family 
and a few followers, to Medina, some two hundred miles north¬ 
ward. This was in 627, and this flight, the Hegira, marks the 
Year One of the Moslem calendar. Medina was not a Bedouin 
community like Mecca but a city of much more advanced 
culture. In this progressive community Mohammed’s advanced 
religious teaching found a welcome. Converts came thick and 


182 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


fast. As his following increased Mohammed’s “revelations” 
increased also, and they came to be particularly detailed on the 
side of organization and administration. Whole towns and 
tribes, round about Medina, went over to the new faith. Eight 
years after his flight Mohammed returned to Mecca at the 
head of a conquering army. As the pilgrimage center for all 
Arabs the possession of Mecca was an essential part of his 
scheme of founding a national religion. Mecca became and 
has since remained the Holy City of the Moslem world. 

Mohammed next conceived the idea that his religion should 
be the universal faith of mankind. Having unified Arabia, he 
sent emissaries to Egypt, to the Eastern Empire, and to Persia, 
demanding their allegiance to him as the prophet of the True 
God. He even began hostilities against the Eastern Empire. 
Before he could further forward his plans, however, he died 
( 632 ). 

Mohammedanism 

We must now make some examination of the religion which 
Mohammed founded, a faith which has more adherents to-day 
than has Christianity, and which is making new converts faster. 
The chief source of our knowledge of the religion is the Koran. 
This was “revealed” to Mohammed, the last and greatest of 
the Prophets, as he claimed to be, bit by bit, and was related 
by him to his followers, who wrote it down. As the Koran has 
come down to us the longest and least interesting chapters are 
first and the shorter, more practical and interesting chapters 
come later, so it is well to begin to read the book at the end. 
Besides the Koran there is a body of tradition, now reduced to 
writing, the “Sunna”, or things Mohammed’s followers had 
heard him say and seen him do. A third source for the Mo¬ 
hammedan faith is the expository comments of the learned 
doctors, the Mohammedan theologians. 

It may be said at once that Mohammedanism was an im¬ 
mense improvement over the polytheism, superstition, and idol- 
worship of the earlier Arabs. Mohammed’s concept of God is 
a spiritual one. God is One, unseen, but all-knowing, all-wise, 
and all-powerful. The duty of the believer is, simply, unques- 


MOHAMMEDANISM SPREADS WESTWARD 183 

tioning obedience. Obey God’s commands and you will be re¬ 
warded; disobey and you will be punished. This is a rather 
legalistic concept of God, to be sure. Mohammed had little to 
say of a God of love. His concept of God was, in fact, like that 
of the Old Testament. The legalistic emphasis in Mohammedan¬ 
ism is further revealed in the Prophet’s insistence upon the 
precise and formal observance of the four cardinal virtues— 
prayer five times daily, almsgiving, the fast of Ramadan, con¬ 
tinuing through one month of each year, and the pilgrimage to 
Mecca, to be performed by all the faithful at least once in a 
lifetime. If the true believer scrupulously continued to do all 
that the law enjoined a secure entrance to paradise was prom¬ 
ised. From this belief it is but a short step to thorough¬ 
going predestination and fatalism. Mohammedanism was 
just the faith to attract the Arabs, with their propensity for 
war. To die for the faith was to make entrance to paradise 
doubly sure. The Mohammedan paradise, incidentally, was 
not one of pearly gates and streets of gold, but a sort of super¬ 
oasis with rich pasture lands and sparkling springs of water. 

But Mohammed was law-giver as well as prophet, and it 
is in his social legislation that he is seen at his best. Personal 
cleanliness was rigorously enjoined. The use of water was a 
religious rite, in fact. This does not seem so strange when we 
remember how precious water seemed to the thirsty nomad. 
On the other hand, the use of alcoholic drinks was rigorously 
forbidden, and this prohibition measure was enforced by re¬ 
ligious sanctions. There is much legislation in the Koran, like¬ 
wise, in behalf of the poor, the infirm in body or mind, and 
infants and orphans. The sanctity of marriage and the family 
is upheld. In these matters Mohammed was fully abreast of 
Christian legislation and of the most enlightened Roman prac¬ 
tice. Among the Arabs these laws, strictly enforced, would 
have raised the whole plane of existence. We may even score a 
point for Mohammedanism in noting that no provision was 
made for a priest-caste. Every Mohammedan was to be his 
own priest. Thus was avoided the wealthy, ambitious, and self- 
seeking clergy who have sometimes made themselves an oppres¬ 
sion to the people of Christian Europe. 


184 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


All in all Mohammedanism is one of the great religions of 
the world and a faithful and earnest follower of that faith 
should have our full respect. Christian missionaries, long in 
contact with Mohammedans and concerned to search out the 
weak points in their religion, criticize it in the following ways. 
First, it has not the Christian love of and zeal for the care of 
children. Secondly, its treatment of the home and of woman¬ 
hood is defective. Mohammed himself, the critics point out, 
married one of his wives at the age of nine, and he left eleven 
widows. Thirdly, Mohammedanism is the foe to freedom of 
thought. Fourthly, it is the enemy of democracy. It will be 
observed, however, that the critics are here contrasting two 
social systems, for the most part, rather than two religions. 

Mohammedan Conquests 

We have noted earlier the fighting mentality of the Arabs. 
Mohammedanism was a fighting religion. “ Islam alone of all 
the great religions of the human race was born sword in hand,” 
says Sir Valentine Chirol. Even now the mollah who reads the 
Friday prayers in the mosque wears a sword as the symbol of 
his creed. “The Koran, tribute, or the sword,” was the famous 
watchword of the Arab hosts. Mohammed himself had set the 
example before his death and had indicated what worlds were 
next to be conquered by his followers. The swiftness with which 
vast provinces in three continents were overrun and conquered 
is unparalleled in history. Pushing northward through Syria 
and westward through Asia Minor the Mohammedan armies 
reached the Bosporus. Constantinople was twice besieged but 
it proved impregnable, and the advance of Islam into Europe 
by way of the East was delayed for eight centuries. Meanwhile 
other armies were overrunning Mesopotamia and entering India, 
where there are to-day over ninety million Moslems, nearly 
one-third of the population of the Indian Empire. 

At the same time other forces of Islam were conquering 
Egypt. Then, overflowing that land to the west, the conquering 
Arabs made their way along the whole of the long coast of 
North Africa, wiping out the rule of Rome so recently restored 
there by Justinian and converting to their faith the tribes of 








































































































































MOHAMMEDANISM SPREADS WESTWARD 185 

the desert which bordered Roman Africa on the south. In 711 
the Arabs crossed the Straits of Gibraltar into Spain. Our 
word “ Gibraltar ” is a corrupt form of the name of the Arab 
leader. In Spain the rule of the West Goths was overthrown. 
Crossing the Pyrenees the Moslems entered southern Gaul. 
The story of the successful repulse of the all-conquering Arabs 
by Karl Martel at Tours has already been told. The date of 
this decisive battle which set a bound, at last, to Mohammedan 
conquest in the West was 732, or just one hundred years after 
the death of Mohammed. Retiring through southern Gaul, the 
Moslems crossed the Pyrenees and consolidated their hold on 
the Spanish peninsula, parts of which they were destined to 
occupy for nearly eight centuries. In form the Mohammedan 
conquests, a century after the death of the Prophet, were a 
crescent, spanning three continents. It was, says Carlyle, “as if 
a spark had fallen, one spark on a world of what seemed black 
unnoticeable sand; but lo, the sand proves explosive powder, 
blazes high from Delhi to Granada!” 

Reasons for the Success of Mohammedanism 

For this stupendous expansion of Mohammedan power we 
may offer the explanation of religous fanaticism coupled with 
the Arabs’ remarkable aptitude for war and craving for booty. 
But these factors are scarcely sufficient. We must delve more 
deeply. First, we may note that the economic geography of 
their vast crescent of conquest is in the main identical with 
that of the Arabian peninsula itself. We may call it the Arid 
Crescent. It is an Arabia writ large and marvelously adapted, 
therefore, to the folk-ways of the Arabs. In this Arid Crescent 
the Sahara is the central desert, and the fertile valleys of the 
Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates are the principal “oases”. Cen¬ 
tral and southern Spain, though joined to the continent of 
Europe, are geologically and climatically like northern Africa. 
There is in Spain a wet and a dry season; the rainfall is insuffi¬ 
cient and the parched soil must be well irrigated. The general 
similarity of the economic geography of the vast Arid Crescent 
and of the Arabian homeland, then, helps us to understand 
the marvelous adaptability of the Arabs to conditions in their 


186 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


great empire and helps to explain the ease of its conquest. Even 
the original impulse that set the Arabs in motion was not re¬ 
ligious enthusiasm, entirely. “All recent writers agree that a 
period of unusual drought preceded the coming of Mohammed 
and that the tribes were in a high state of unrest and peculiarly 
susceptible to any new leadership which offered a means of 
escape from the precarious life of the desert.” 1 

Further, it is clear that to the millions of North Africa, 
Egypt, and Syria the coming of the Mohammedan conquerors 
was welcomed, if not even connived at. These peoples, all sub¬ 
jects of the Eastern Empire, had long groaned under a burden 
of taxation too grievous to be borne. Byzantine rule was pater¬ 
nalistic in the highest measure, and was made effective through 
a well-trained bureaucracy. Local autonomy was crushed. Not 
the least of the meddlesome, interfering policies of the emperor 
was religious persecution, spasmodic and unpredictable but 
relentless. Mohammedan rule, by contrast, was merciful and 
enlightened. The watchword, “The Koran, tribute, or the 
sword”, was not nearly so terrible as it sounds. It meant, in 
actual practice, the payment of a poll-tax by all such as chose 
to remain unbelievers, in addition to the regular taxation levied 
upon all Mohammedan subjects. From the payment of the 
poll-tax, however, all women, minors, the very old, and the 
very poor were exempted. Further, the poll-tax was graduated 
according to wealth, or the lack of it, and was not oppressive. 
The tax paid, the subject peoples enjoyed the protection of 
the Mohammedan government in the use of their own speech, 
their own religion, and their own customs; and they were left 
to go about their business entirely free from paternalistic in¬ 
terference. Thompson’s conclusion is, “The population of 
Egypt, Africa, Syria was happier under the crescent than they 
had been under Byzantium.” 2 

In Spain the situation was different, but almost equally 
favorable to Mohammedan intervention. There the Jews, a 
prosperous business class, constituted an oppressed minority, 
mercilessly persecuted by the bigoted fanatics at the head of 

1 J. W. Thompson, op. tit., p. 185. 

2 Op. tit., p. 195. 


MOHAMMEDANISM SPREADS WESTWARD 


187 


the West Gothic state. The progress of Mohammedan arms in 
North Africa was watched by the Jews of Spain with eager 
interest. Secret negotiations were entered into between the 
Spanish Jews and the Arab leaders in Africa, and once Moslem 
forces had crossed to Spain the Jews seem to have done all 
they could to forward the conquest of the peninsula. Spanish 
churches and monasteries offered rich booty, the accumulation 
of centuries. The ignorant Mohammedan soldiers, eager to 
convert the costly ornaments of altars and shrines into more 
easily expendible cash, sold them to the Jews for trifling amounts. 

Mohammedan Dynasties 

We must not lose sight of the fact that Mohammed not only 
preached a new religion but that he was also the founder and 
ruler of a state. Unfortunately the Prophet left no son. One 
of his early converts and devoted followers was a wealthy mer¬ 
chant of Mecca named Abu Bekr. He had been Mohammed’s 
sole companion in the famous Flight. Mohammed had married 
Ayesha, the daughter of Abu Bekr. It seems to have been 
generally understood among those close to Mohammed that 
the Prophet intended that Abu Bekr should succeed him. On 
Mohammed’s death Abu Bekr assumed the title of “caliph”, or 
successor, and won the right to this designation by the masterly 
way in which he crushed a revolt in Arabia which seemed des¬ 
tined to end the political power of Mohammedanism then and 
there. Upon the death of Abu Bekr (643 a.d.) the succession 
devolved upon Omar (634-644), who had also been one of the 
inner group of Mohammed’s followers. This great caliph, 
through his conquests of Syria, Persia, and Egypt, may be called 
the founder of the Arabian empire. The next caliph, Othman 
(644-656), chosen in the same informal way, was struck down 
by an assassin, and civil war broke out among the followers of 
Mohammed. It was most unfortunate that the Prophet, among 
the many immutable laws he transmitted to his followers, had 
not received from the All-Wise Allah a good succession scheme. 

After some years of civil strife the caliphate became heredi¬ 
tary for a time in the Ommiad family. The capital was moved 
from Medina, a small provincial town, to Damascus, on one of 


188 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the cross-roads of the East, a worthy setting for the govern¬ 
ment of a vast empire. As non-Arab elements were added to the 
Moslem world, dissent, never absent even in the earliest elec¬ 
tions of caliphs, became a serious matter. The Ommiad family 
became weak and corrupt, and a sudden revolution took place 
under the leadership of the non-Arab Abbassid family. This 
line of caliphs, drawing most of its support from Persia, moved 
the capital from Damascus to Baghdad. This was in 762. As 
Damascus was to Medina, so Baghdad was to Damascus. In 
the century following the establishment of the Abbassid dy¬ 
nasty Baghdad became the wealthiest city in the East, with 
a population estimated at two million. The trade of India and 
Persia flowed westward through Baghdad, both by land and by 
water. Indeed, the conquests of Mohammedanism, under the 
Baghdad caliphs, became commercial rather than military. In 
the fertile soil of Baghdad there flourished a most brilliant 
civilization, some of whose achievements we shall presently 
review. The life of Baghdad is well portrayed in the “Thousand 
and One Nights”, a series of tales of which the caliph Haroun- 
al-Rashid (786-809) was the hero. 

Needless to say, the triumph of the non-Arab Abbassids of 
Baghdad was followed by revolt, and the political disintegration 
of the Mohammedan world ensued. A scion of the Ommiad 
family, hunted by Abbassid assassins through thousands of 
miles, managed to reach the province of Spain. Here the local 
leaders set him up at Cordova as their caliph, and thus the 
Mohammedan world, politically and religiously, was rent in 
twain (c. 750). Not long thereafter a third segment appeared 
in the crescent as a new caliphate was established in Egypt by 
the Fatimites, descendants of one of Mohammed’s wives, with 
its capital at Cairo. Once begun, the disease of disintegration 
fastened itself upon each of the three rival caliphates, and local 
rulers, known as emirs, sought to establish themselves. But 
we need not follow the ramifications of Saracen political his¬ 
tory further. We should not overlook the importance of Moslem 
disintegration for the non-Moslem world, however, and espe¬ 
cially its importance for Europe. It is clear that it was the 
crumbling of Mohammedan power which set a bound to their 


MOHAMMEDANISM SPREADS WESTWARD 


189 


conquests. It has been said that “Mussulman divisions alone 
prevented a conquest of Italy as complete as that of Spain.” 1 
Sicily and southern Italy the Arabs did occupy, and they twice 
pushed up the Tiber to attack Rome, as we have seen. 

The Mohammedan Menace 

Despite political disunion the Mohammedan world remained 
a menace to Europe for centuries. The western Mediterranean 
was closed to Christian commerce by Saracen pirates until the 
thirteenth century. In the East the rise of the Seljuk Turks 
in the eleventh century was a threat to the Eastern Empire 
which, delayed for two hundred years by the Crusades, was at 
length fulfilled in early modern times. Since then, however, the 
Moslem world has ceased to challenge the Christian world. 
Europe has exploited her vast resources of coal and iron and 
other minerals and has thus developed a powerful industrial 
civilization which has overflowed into the New World. A similar 
development in the Arid Crescent is impossible. Its central 
core is too desolate, its agricultural areas too isolated, its re¬ 
sources in coal and iron too poor. Islam “will never loom again 
as a menace to western civilization as it did when Leo the 
Isaurian defended Constantinople in 717 and Charles the 
Hammer beat back the Moors from the very heart of France 
in 732.” 2 


Nature of Mohammedan Civilization 

Important as was this occupation of European soil by Mos¬ 
lems it was not the only and indeed by no means the most im¬ 
portant influence of the Mohammedan world upon Europe. 
Far exceeding mere territorial occupation was the contact 
which Europe had, in this and in other ways, with what must 
be recognized quite frankly as a superior civilization. To this 
civilization the Arabs themselves contributed their language 
and their religion and but little more, for they had little civiliza¬ 
tion of their own, as we have seen. But, “they overran the 
kingdoms of science as rapidly as they had conquered the 

1 C. R. Beazley, The Dawn of Modern Geography , I, 168. 

2 J. K. Wright, The Geographical Basis of European History, p. 24. 


190 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


kingdoms of the earth.’’ Their conquests had brought them 
into contact with the oldest civilizations of the East—Greek, 
Persian, Egyptian, Hindu, and even Chinese—and out of 
these, selecting brightly colored threads, as it were, they wove 
a composite civilization. 

A Commercial Empire 

Mohammed had made his appeal not only to the fighting 
instincts of the Bedouins but also to the commercial instincts 
of the Arabs of the coastal fringe. The Prophet himself was a 
merchant. He belonged to the tribe which monopolized the trade 
of western Arabia through its control of the pilgrim center, 
Mecca. The Koran abounds in injunctions for the protection 
and encouragement of merchants. Political and religious con¬ 
quest was succeeded by commercial conquest. Furthermore, 
the commercial “empire” which resulted was both more ex¬ 
tensive and longer lived than the political empire; for the 
merchant often succeeded where the soldier failed, and com¬ 
mercial intercourse was little affected by political disintegration. 
Spain, North Africa, Syria, Arabia, Persia, Mesopotamia, half 
of India, the islands of the Indian Ocean—these suggest the 
extent of the commercial empire which linked together three 
continents. Throughout these widely scattered regions, during 
the whole of the middle ages, the Mohammedan religion and 
the Arabian tongue opened the way for the Arab merchant and 
made him at home. Arabic was the language of commerce in 
those regions as English is to-day. The likeness of this Arab 
empire to the modern British empire is suggestive and, as has 
been pointed out, both are commercial empires. 

The vital problem of such a far-flung empire, be it political 
or commercial, is communication. This was secured in the 
Mohammedan world through a system of couriers, a pony ex¬ 
press. Moslem governments spent large sums establishing 
stations which should link up the more important cities. We 
are told that the caliphs of Baghdad maintained nearly a 
thousand of these stations. Wealthy citizens provided endow¬ 
ment for courier stations in their wills. The swiftness of the 
courier service is amazing, a maximum of 750 miles in three 


MOHAMMEDANISM SPREADS WESTWARD 


191 


days being attained. Some use of a “ pigeon-post ’’ was made, 
also. The courier stations established and maintained by the 
government were conveniences for the merchant and traveler, 
like the military roads of Rome. Along the courier routes 
flowed securely an unending stream of communication carrying 
the elements of the composite civilization of the Moslems to 
every part of the known world. 

Agriculture and Industry 

This fresh contact of Europe with the great civilizations of 
the East was of vital importance to her. Western Europe had 
almost lost her contact with the East through the fall of Rome, 
the invasions of the Germans, and the schism between Rome 
and Constantinople. What elements of civilization did western 
Europe draw from the Mohammedan world? First, agricultural 
products and agricultural science. Egypt, Syria, and Meso¬ 
potamia, now in Mohammedan hands, were the oldest agri¬ 
cultural areas in the world. Their greatly varied products and 
their wealth of agricultural knowledge were eagerly drawn upon 
by the Arab conquerors. Consider the following agricultural 
products first introduced into western Europe by the Arab 
farmers of Spain—lemons, strawberries, pomegranates, dates, 
cotton, rice, sugar cane, spinach, and asparagus. The skill of 
the ancient agricultural communities of the Near East in the 
use of irrigation, fertilizers, and crop-rotation methods was also 
drawn upon by the Arabs of Spain. “ Agriculture deserved the 
name of a science in Spain at a time when it was only manual 
labor elsewhere.” 1 

Europe also received articles of manufacture from the Moslem 
world. A list of these would be a very long one. We may select 
a few for special remark. Arms and armor, and especially the 
sword blades produced at Damascus, Toledo, and other Moslem 
centers were in great demand in western Europe throughout 
the middle ages. Leather goods, too, were of a quality which 
the tanneries of western Europe could not match. Even now 
the so-called Cordovan and Moroccan leathers are world- 
famous. Other articles of manufacture Europe did not produce 

1 J. W. Thompson, op. tit., p. 547. 


192 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


at all (if we except Moslem Spain), such as silk, cotton, glass, 
and porcelain. The rugs and carpets of the Orient were famous, 
as they still are. 

Science and Philosophy 

Turning from agricultural products and articles of manu¬ 
facture we may note elements in the stream of civilization of a 
less tangible sort, such as scientific knowledge and philosophical 
ideas. The Arabs made a fresh and direct contact with Greek 
thought, without the gloss of Christian theology with which 
Europe’s knowledge of Greek learning had now been overlaid. 
The works of Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Galen, and many more 
were now translated into Arabic. Most of Aristotle’s scientific 
writings were first made known to the scholars of western Europe 
through Arabic translations. The leading mosques throughout 
the Mohammedan world became centers of learning—universi¬ 
ties, in fact, where libraries were collected, the learning of the 
Orient assimilated, and fresh progress made. These Arab schools, 
down to the time of the Crusades, at least, “held undisputed 
supremacy in ancient knowledge and thought. . . . Intellec¬ 
tual supremacy passed to them.” 1 

To ignore much beside, we may select the Moslems’ knowledge 
of mathematics, astronomy, and medicine for special remark. 
The basis of their knowledge in these fields was, of course, Greek. 
The so-called Arabic numerals were not invented by the Arabs— 
their origin is unknown—but this alphabet of mathematics 
was first made generally known to western Europeans through 
the works of Arab mathematicians. The zero, the invention of 
which was a stroke of genius, was first used and was probably 
invented by an Arab scholar of the twelfth century. He thus 
laid the foundation of the decimal system, which was promptly 
developed. Algebra was invented by Arab mathematicians, 
as the name suggests, and carried as far as second degree equa¬ 
tions. Beginnings were made, also, in analytic geometry, trigo¬ 
nometry, and physics. In astronomy the Arabs made contact 
with the scientific, as well as the unscientific, lore of ancient 
Chaldea, and building upon those foundations calculated the 

1 C. R. Beazley, op. cit., I, 126-127. 


MOHAMMEDANISM SPREADS WESTWARD 


193 


angle of the ecliptic and the precession of the equinoxes. In 
the field of medicine definite progress was made in advance of 
Greek knowledge. Arab physicians were the best in the world. 
They performed major operations, making use of crude anaes¬ 
thetics. Their materia medica was identical with our own. Their 
methods of treatment were, as far as they went, scientific. It 
is not to be marveled at that the first school for the scientific 
study of medicine in Christian Europe was in Salerno, in south¬ 
ern Italy, long in contact with the Mohammedan world. 

In a civilization as composite as that of the Saracens it is 
a formidable task to indicate even its principal categories. A 
short-cut to our appreciation of the multitudinous aspects of 
its influence on western civilization lies in a list of some of 
the words of Arabic origin now part of the English language. 
Among such are mathematical and astronomical terms like 
zero, cipher, algebra, azimuth, zenith, and nadir; architectural 
terms, such as alcove and minaret; words for house furnishings, 
such as sofa, mattress, and mohair; names of animals, such as 
gazelle, giraffe, genet, and tabby; names of various types of 
persons and officials such as mulatto, sheik, admiral, assassin, 
bedouin, nabob, sahib, vizier, emir, and sultan, and imaginary 
beings such as houri, ghoul, and jinn; articles of food and drink 
such as coffee, alcohol, artichoke, caraway, and syrup; and a 
long list of miscellaneous articles such as sherbet, shrub, gyp¬ 
sum, naphtha, benzine, jasper, myrrh, senna, amber, cotton, 
sumach, talc, tambourine, lute, saffron, hookah, and hashish. 1 
These and other Arabic words in our language illustrate the 
principle that “the word follows the thing.” Of course most 
of the words in the above list came over into English through 
the medium of Spanish and French and not directly from the 
Arabic. 

For Further Reading 

Cambridge Mediaeval History , II, chaps. 10, 11, and 12 
J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 
chaps. 7 and 15 

DeLacy O’Leary, Arabia before Mohammed 

1 For a fuller list see W. W. Skeat, A Concise Etymological Dictionary of 
the English Language (ed. of 1927), pp. 659-660. 


194 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


D. S. Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam 

-, The Speeches and Table-talk of Mohammed 

T. W. Arnold, The Preaching of Islam 

G. leStrange, Baghdad under the Abbassid Caliphate 

E. H. Palmer, Life of Haran-al-Rashid 

S. L. Poole, A History of Egypt in the Middle Ages 

R. P. A. Dozy, Spanish Islam (Translation by F. G. Stokes) 

Arabian Nights, ed. by E. W. Lane 

The Koran (Translation of J. M. Rad well, in Everyman’s Library) 



CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


FEUDAL CIVILIZATION 

By the year 900 a.d. feudalism had passed through the period 
of origin and stood forth completely developed throughout 
the greater part of western Europe. Of the two aspects of 
feudalism the lower side, that is, the organization of agri¬ 
cultural life in village communities known as manors, is much 
the older. We have seen the great forward surge in the develop¬ 
ment of the manorial system during the civil wars of the seventh 
century, but its origins go back to the later Roman Empire. 
The upper side of feudalism, sometimes referred to as the 
political aspect, is substantially the result of the invasions and 
the civil wars of the ninth century which resulted in the dis¬ 
integration of the Frankish Empire. 

Public Authority in Private Hands 

It will be well to deal with these two sides of feudalism in 
turn, beginning with the upper side, or feudalism as a form of 
government. We have already seen how the all-pervasive au¬ 
thority of the central government diminished and even disap¬ 
peared during the course of the ninth century. The Frankish 
king had formerly exercised his political authority either in 
person or through his council or through his local counts with 
their subordinates, with the ingenious and effective system of 
missi dominici to supervise local administration. A century of 
civil wars among the descendants of Charlemagne, together 
with the most terribly destructive raids known to European 
history, had sufficed to work a great transformation. Every¬ 
where, at the close of the century, political authority was to 
be found in the hands of the local strong men who made up 
the class of great landlords, whether bishops or abbots or the 
more numerous lay barons. How did it get there? 

It should be said at once that the question of origins is a 
195 


196 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


very thorny one on which much has been said and upon which 
much more cannot be said with certainty. The records which 
have come down to us from the period of origins are so frag¬ 
mentary that it is impossible to do more than sketch the broad 
outlines of the scenario. As we have seen, the great landlords, 
from the later Roman Empire on down, were accustomed to 
lording it over their coloni and serfs, taxing them and judging 
them. Over their free neighbors, of course, these landlords had 
no authority whatever. Over their own serfs, furthermore, the 
authority of the landlords was not complete. Both Roman and 
Frankish law intervened to protect the personal and property 
rights of such dependents. Even slaves enjoyed the protection 
of the public authority in limited but quite definite ways. Thus 
we may distinguish, first, the private jurisdiction of the 
landlord, limited to his own serfs, and confined even in 
their case to “low justice”; and secondly, the public juris¬ 
diction, that is, the protection of personal and property rights 
which the state offered to all subjects, including serfs and 
slaves. 

Under Charlemagne a quite elaborate and effective organiza¬ 
tion had been built up whereby public authority was carried 
outward to the most remote localities and downward to the 
lowest orders of society. During the disorders of the ninth 
century this organization ceased to function. Everywhere, it 
would seem, the landlords quietly (more or less) assumed the 
exercise of the public authority which the central government 
neglected. This meant that the barons, as we may now call 
them, not only lorded it over their own serfs more completely 
than ever before, but that they began to assume the authority 
of government over their free neighbors as well. No doubt 
much of this last was government without the consent of the 
governed. The strong oppressed the weak and the rich exploited 
the poor, for there was none to say them nay. In German history 
this condition of affairs is characterized by the expressive term 
faustrecht, or law of the fist. By extending his authority over 
his weaker neighbors a baron could round out an “immunity”. 
It must be recognized that much of this assumption of the 
authority and work of government was with the direct en- 


FEUDAL CIVILIZATION 


197 


couragement of the central government itself. The king, con¬ 
fessing his inability to maintain the necessary services of gov¬ 
ernment in an outlying province or one especially subject to 
the forays of the Northmen, would invest one or more of the 
great landlords of the province with political authority there. 
Thus the authority of the lords over their own dependents 
would be completed, and the freemen of the neighborhood 
would be subjected to the judicial, if not also to the economic, 
authority of the landlords; and an “immunity ” would thus be 
set up into which the central government no longer intruded 
itself. 

Whatever the origin of this upper or political side of feudalism 
may have been, and no attempt has been made here to exhaust 
the subject, there can be no doubt that by the tenth century 
government in western Europe had been feudalized. The use 
of such phrases as “breakdown” and “collapse” of public au¬ 
thority suggest a mood of depression about the new form of 
government which is by no means justified. Feudal govern¬ 
ment was certainly an improvement upon the “slave empire” 
of the later days of Rome, with its crushing weight upon 
all but the highly privileged few. And it had the great 
advantage over Charlemagne’s government, even at its best, 
of having firmer grasp on reality. Under feudalism the 
powerful forces at work in society were actually grappled with. 
Disintegration was checked at last, and integration began. 
“In theory”, says Professor Thompson, “the feudal system 
was probably the most ideal form of government the brain 
and heart of man has ever devised ”. And he adds, “ Its 
fundamental principle, that the possession of property entails 
public duty, and that great wealth owes something to society, 
is of the essence of good government and just social relations”. 1 
Bishop Stubbs says of feudalism, cautiously, that “ it would 
have been a very excellent device if it could have been ad¬ 
ministered by archangels.” Man has found it necessary, how¬ 
ever, to devise a government that will work tolerably well 
with men in positions of authority who are a little lower than 
the angels. 

1 Op. cit., p. 703. 


198 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


The “Typical” Feudal Kingdom 

Let us try to picture a “typical” feudal kingdom, bearing 
in mind that for every general statement exceptions can be 
found. At the head was the feudal king, holding his kingdom as 
a fief of God, if he had no earthly overlord, rendering service 
to God as His vassal in the shape of just government, in return 
for God’s fostering care and protection. Under him the king 
would have a number of vassals, tenants-in-chief of the crown, 
who held their lands of him by noble tenure, rendering military 
service, among other services. These tenants might be dukes, 
counts, barons, or even knights, which terms bear some rela¬ 
tion to the size of their respective holdings. In many cases 
bishops, abbots, and other ecclesiastics also held land of the 
king by military service. Of course the king had his own pri¬ 
vate lands held of him by non-noble service, that is, by labor 
service and food-rents. Indeed that king was fortunate whose 
private estates were large, for a mediaeval king had to “live of 
his own”. One such fortunate king was William the Conqueror, 
who retained in his own hands forty per cent of all England, 
and was himself by far the greatest baron in the land. The early 
kings of France were most unfortunate, as their private estates 
were exceeded in extent by those of at least half a dozen of 
their barons. 

The Oath of Homage 

What was the nature of the relationship between noble ten¬ 
ant and king? It was, in the first place, a personal relationship, 
a free agreement between a leader and his followers. This re¬ 
minds us of the relation of the war-band to its chief among the 
early Germans, which may be one source of the feudal arrange¬ 
ment. The personal bond between lord and man, and we shall 
find that this holds good in the lower as well as in the higher orders 
of feudalism, was set up by the act of homage. This ceremony 
came to be as solemn a rite as the middle ages afforded. It pro¬ 
ceeded somewhat as follows. The lord sat and the man knelt on 
both knees, ungirt, with his head uncovered. He then placed 
both his hands between the hands of his lord, and said, “I 
become your man of the fief I hold of you and faith to you will 


FEUDAL CIVILIZATION 


199 


bear of life and members and earthly worship and faith to 
you shall bear against all folk who can live or die.” The lord then 
kissed his vassal. The impression this ceremony made on the 
minds of men in the middle ages is suggested by the fact that 
the murder of one’s lord was compared to blasphemy against 
the Holy Ghost, and was perhaps the rarest of crimes. 

It should be said that the lord was bound to be faithful to his 
man quite as much as the man was bound to be faithful to 
his lord, owing him protection in return for faithful service. 
Nor was this merely a formal obligation. The barons of the 
kingdom of Aragon swore they would obey the king and serve 
him if he maintained their rights and customs, and if not, not. 
After King John of England had repeatedly and arbitrarily 
violated the duty he owed his barons, they finally drew up a 
list of their rights and customs and required the king to take 
his oath to observe them. The barons then set up a committee 
of twenty-five of their number to see to it that the king kept 
his oath. 

The Fief 

This personal relation between man and lord, between baron 
and king, might exist independently of any other bond or 
“nexus”, and frequently did so exist. Usually, however, there 
was also a relationship of property, commonly land. The land¬ 
less personal followers of the king who lived at court looked 
forward to a grant of land at the first opportunity, whereby the 
king would reward their faithful service. There was no other way 
in which the king could pay his followers, in fact. Thus there 
was a property as well as a personal element in the feudal bond 
between vassal and lord. The oath of homage was accompanied 
by and merged with an act of investiture, in which the vassal 
was invested by his lord with his fief by some such symbol 
as a flag or a staff. 

Let us examine the element of property in the feudal rela¬ 
tion. In the best period of Roman law, as at present, ownership 
( dominium ) was a complete whole, that is, the owner of a piece 
of land or other property excluded every one else and held it 
alone. In the later days of the Empire, however, when great 


200 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


landed estates increased and multiplied, a new conception of 
property arose. Landlords found it convenient to grant parcels 
of their land to individual farmers for life, giving them the right 
to occupy and cultivate the land on certain terms, that is, the 
right of “useful ownership” (dominium utile), while they them¬ 
selves retained the ultimate or actual ownership (dominium 
eminens, whence our “eminent domain”). On the death of 
the occupying cultivator the parcel he had held would “revert” 
to the proprietor. These life estates were known as “benefices” 
(beneficia). Mediaeval landlords found this dual concept of 
ownership a very convenient one. A fief was a benefice with 
this difference, that the occupier with the “useful ownership”, 
that is, the vassal, was usually deemed to have an hereditary 
estate and not merely a life estate. In other words, his heir or 
heirs claimed the right to succeed him in the property and there¬ 
fore in the feudal relationship. Thus the barons held their 
fiefs of their lord the king by noble service and by hereditary 
right. The principle of hereditary right is found in the lower 
side of feudalism also, as we shall see. 

Military Service 

It is time to examine more particularly the service which 
the barons, whether ecclesiastics or laymen, owed the king. 
This service was, in general, of two kinds, military service and 
government work. Military service consisted of furnishing the 
king with a certain number of armed knights. The number bore 
a rough relationship to the size of the fief and might vary from 
one (or even a fraction of one!) to several hundred. The baron 
himself must come to the feudal array as one of the number owed. 
All must come on time and fully equipped (promptus et paratus). 
The service was for a maximum of forty days a year, in general. 

We should not form too light an estimate of this knight 
service. The evolution from the German freeman to the armed 
and armored knight as the fighting unit of European society is 
a considerable one. The knight was encased in armor, the best 
he could buy. Though earlier of chain mail, leaving parts of 
the body exposed, armor was later of plated steel, completely 
covering the body from head to foot. The knight’s horse was 


FEUDAL CIVILIZATION 


201 


also armored, though less completely. Armor making was one 
of the fine arts, and a study of its evolution will repay the 
student. Various weapons were carried, including lance, battle- 
axe, a short sword, and a shield for defense. Arms and armor 
together might weigh as much as ninety pounds. The knight 
thus accoutred could not mount his steed without assistance, 
for of course he fought on horseback. Each knight was accom¬ 
panied by a number of squires and servants to help him on and 
off with his armor, to prepare and serve his food, to make and 
to strike camp while in the field, and so on. A string of horses 
and pack animals was thus made necessary. One steed of special 
strength and speed went unencumbered and riderless on the 
march, to be the fresher when mounted by the knight in readi¬ 
ness for battle. Other animals bore the squires and servants, 
the camp equipment, and the provender and supplies, not for¬ 
getting spare parts for the armor of knight and squires. Thus 
a knight was more than a fighting man; he was an “institution.” 

To supply even a small number of such fighting units taxed 
the resources of a considerable estate. In all England there 
were but 5000 knights. Of noble birth, invariably, trained and 
exercised in arms from childhood, serving his apprenticeship to 
some lord as squire, and at last “winning his spurs” by some 
adequate act of military prowess, the knight was a member of 
an hereditary fighting caste. To support one knight the produce 
of hundreds of fertile acres and the labor of scores of peasants 
were required. A baron who owed the king the service of a 
number of knights, then, would provide for it by enfeoffing the 
requisite number of knights, more or less, with parcels of his 
own great fief, thus creating a group of vassals of his own who 
owed him military and other noble service. 

Once the whole feudal array was assembled at the appointed 
time and place, each baron with his complement of knights 
forming a squadron, it constituted an army for the defense of 
the kingdom, small but very formidable. The development of 
such a group of highly efficient specialists in the art of war at 
last closed western Europe to invaders, and thus made possible 
the continuous development of European civilization. More 
than this, feudal Europe took the aggressive and began to push 


202 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


forward its boundaries on every side with expansive energy. 
Making allowance for changes in form, this expansion of Europe 
has gone on ever since and continues in our own day. With 
the development of the feudal array of armed knights the 
military supremacy in the western world passed to the feudal 
kingdoms of Europe. It is interesting to observe that nowhere 
in the world, as yet, has this military supremacy of Europe 
been successfully challenged. 

The Great Council 

Military service, then, was one aspect of the noble service 
owed the king by his baronial tenants-in-chief. The other was 
government work. Each baron was bound by the terms of his 
“contract” to attend the king’s court and give him advice. In 
England the barons were bound to come to the king’s court 
three times a year, Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, and 
on other special occasions. There they formed the feudal Great 
Council, “watching the king wear his crown,” for, lording it 
over their own principality from year’s end to year’s end, they 
might forget that the king alone was king; and “giving him 
deep speech.” The feudal Great Council of barons was the 
central government, so to speak. King and Council would 
transact such business as there was, whether legislative or 
judicial or administrative, without pausing to consider which 
was which, or even being able to distinguish one from another 
in our modern fashion. Of course differentiation along the line 
of functions began in the Council almost immediately, and 
modern administrative and judicial systems and special organs 
for the legislative process are the result. 

The government work which the barons owed their suzerain 
might also be deemed to include the work of governing their 
own principalities. But this, so to speak, was not so much a 
duty as a pleasure. To lord it over his own vassals and serfs 
was a role well calculated to appeal to any normal-minded 
baron. Besides, the profits accruing from the administration of 
local justice were not inconsiderable. Indeed, the average 
mediaeval baron was more interested in the profits of justice 
than in justice itself. 


FEUDAL CIVILIZATION 


203 


The Incidents of Noble Tenure 

The nature of the feudal contract and the importance of the 
service owed will become still more clear if we examine certain 
of the so-called “incidents” of noble tenure. If a vassal died 
leaving a male heir of full age, this heir would be invested with 
his father’s estate by his dead father’s lord only upon payment 
of a fixed sum known as a “relief.” This payment was an ac¬ 
knowledgment on the vassal’s part that he enjoyed “useful” 
and not “ultimate” ownership of the land. If a vassal died 
leaving a male heir under age, the guardianship of the boy and 
the occupancy of the estate belonged to the lord. The lord 
was naturally concerned that the boy should grow up to be¬ 
come a loyal and capable vassal, and the best way to assure this, 
seemingly, was for the baron himself to raise up the boy in the 
way he should go. Then too, the lord must get from the estate 
of the boy due and accustomed service. The boy himself could 
not perform the service, so the lord assured himself of it by 
taking over the estate for the time being. If a vassal died leav¬ 
ing one or more daughters as his heirs, their lord had a marriage 
right, by which he could assure himself that they would have 
husbands who were personally acceptable to him, for the hus¬ 
band of an heiress became the vassal, since a woman could not 
perform the required military service. 

If a vassal died leaving no heirs at all his estate ‘‘escheated” 
to his lord, as naturally follows from what has been said above. 
Something very like this happens now to the property of a 
man who dies without heirs and intestate. If a vassal defaulted 
in his service, having been duly summoned to perform the same 
and the summons and default being duly proved in the lord’s 
court, he might be sentenced to the forfeiture of his estate. For 
if the lord could not get the required service out of one vassal, 
he needs must remove him from his occupancy of the fief 
and invest with it another vassal of more promise. A sheriff’s 
sale for non-payment of taxes is the modern equivalent of the 
feudal “forfeiture”. Then there were the three feudal aids, 
or fixed sums which the vassals of a lord had to pay for the 
ransoming of his body, for the knighting of his eldest son, and 


204 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


for the once marrying of his eldest daughter. These “incidents” 
of noble tenure do not constitute a complete list, but they will 
be sufficient for our purpose. Each had it counterpart in the 
lower side of feudalism as incidents of non-noble service, as we 
shall see. 


Serjeanties 

In order that we shall not get an idea of feudalism that will 
be so simple as to be insufficient it will be well for us to see that 
knight service was not the only form of military service, though 
it was the principal form. Other forms of service were usually 
known as serjeanties (from servientes). These called for service 
which was, so to speak, less expensive. Among the serjeanties 
were the service of supplying esquires, crossbowmen, men for 
castle-guard, and the like, or fractional amounts of the same. 
We hear, for example, of a tenant-in-chief of the king who owed 
him the service of one-sixth of a crossbowman for forty days! 
No doubt a service like this was commuted into a money pay¬ 
ment. Other serjeanties, sometimes called petty serjeanties, 
were non-military. For instance, the countess of Devon held 
an English manor by serjeanty of “ giving the king water for 
washing his hands on Christmas Day, for which the basin and 
towel is a perquisite.” Serjeanties of this sort are literally end¬ 
less in their variety and illustrate the complexity of mediaeval 
life. There is an English serjeanty on record the service of which 
was to hold the king’s head when he crossed the Channel! 

The feudal nobles, then, with the knights as the lowest order 
of nobility, constituted a social order which performed a vital 
function, namely, that of protecting the country against in¬ 
vasion. There was thus a division of labor in feudal society. 
The clergy ( oratores ) ministered to the spiritual needs of men; 
the nobility ( bellatores ) were society’s defenders; and the people 
(laborantes) won from the soil a living for the two privileged 
classes and for themselves. These three social orders were 
recognized early in the development of feudalism, and can 
be found clearly distinguished in documents of the eighth and 
ninth centuries. One writer somewhat fancifully calls the 
clergy the eyes of the body politic, to spy out the road to safety; 


FEUDAL CIVILIZATION 


205 


the nobles, the hands and arms for defense; and the commons, 
the lower parts of the body, to nourish and sustain the upper 
parts . 1 

Private War 

We should note that fighting was not only the social duty of 
the nobility; it was also their private pleasure. War was the 
normal employment of the entire noble class whenever the 
weather was favorable. A certain amount of the fighting time 
was taken up by royal campaigns, either offensive or defensive, 
but the greater part of the fighting done by the nobility was in 
private wars among themselves. It should be remembered that 
feudalism was a vertical system, not horizontal. Vassals of 
the same grade owed a duty to their overlord and to their own 
subtenants but they owed no duty to each other. Further, pri¬ 
vate war was good business. How else could a noble make his 
fortune, or rather, increase it? Land was the only wealth and 
its supply was strictly limited. There were but two ways by 
which a noble could increase his holdings, marriage and war. 
Then, too, private war furnished employment for the knightly 
followers of the nobility, and successful nobles were enabled 
to reward their followers with booty and with fiefs. Private 
war, also, kept the fighting class in good fighting condition. So 
keenly was this need of keeping in training felt that in the rare 
intervals of peace nobles would arrange tournaments in which 
they could wage mimic wars. Law suits involving land or 
other matters were usually decided by the duellum, or ordeal 
of battle. 

The Institution of Chivalry 

So deeply rooted in the noble order was this instinct for 
private war that all attempts to stop it were failures, and in¬ 
evitably so. This is not the place to review the mediaeval 
movements to “enforce peace”. They were usually undertaken 
by the church, convinced as it was that war was the enemy of 
civilization. We may notice here, however, a notable and noble 
effort of the church to sublimate war, and perhaps even to 


Thompson, op. cit., p. 707. 


206 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


“civilize ” it. This is the institution of chivalry, which has 
been defined as “the consecration of the fighting instincts of 
the laity to the uses of the church.” The ideal knight came 
to be thought of as preferably a celibate, even tonsured, who 
spent his life fighting the infidel or engaged in other “just” 
wars. Nor should the “chivalrous” attitude of these bachelor 
knights toward women be left out of our picture, for these 
“perfect” knights were the “friends of God and women”. 

Great international orders of chivalry sprang up, with elabo¬ 
rate statutes which set forth the objectives of the order and the 
rules of knightly conduct. The art of heraldry, so intimately as¬ 
sociated with the institution of chivalry, was the joint product 
of the closed helmet, which masked the knight’s identity, 
and contact with Saracenic art during the Crusades. Heraldry 
quickly rooted itself, widely and deeply, in the feudal art of 
western Europe. Its mottoes reflect the ideals and the morals 
of chivalry, and its patterns and combination of colors reveal 
the artistic aspirations and capacities of mediaeval men. 

The institution of chivalry, then, directed the fighting pro¬ 
pensities of the nobility, to some extent, into channels sanctioned 
by the church. Doubtless, too, it humanized the methods of pri¬ 
vate war. It was not “knightly” to take unfair advantage of 
your opponent; you should treat him generously. As compared 
to the later “professionals” who were not “gentlemen”, we 
may think of these mediaeval knights not too fancifully as 
making war on each other in the spirit of the modern amateur 
in sport. War was a game, to be played according to the rules. 
You were not supposed to hit your opponent when he was down. 
It was actually more profitable to capture him and hold him 
for ransom than to kill him, anyway. Probably the damage done 
to each other by two groups of armed and mounted knights in 
the shock of a charge was not much greater than that done 
by two American college football teams twenty-five years ago. 

Feudal Castles 

Of all the features of the upper side of feudalism, however, 
the feudal castle was perhaps the most completely symbolic. 
Private strongholds were unknown in the Roman Empire; in- 


FEUDAL CIVILIZATION 


207 


deed, they were expressly forbidden. A sovereignty like that 
of the emperor could brook no rivals. Even under the earlier 
Carolingians this was true. Charlemagne guaranteed protec¬ 
tion of life and property to all his subjects, and under him in¬ 
ternal warfare was unknown. The Carolingian nobles lived 
in great rambling country houses, without protection, and the 
surrounding peasantry dwelt in open villages. Castle building, 
then, meant that the central authority could no longer hold in 
check the local challengers of its authority, nor afford protection 
for life and property. It is an eloquent fact that one of the 
later Carolingians, Charles the Bald, issued a capitulary in 862 
urging the nobles to build strongholds as a social duty. 

The earlier castles were crude structures of wood like the 
blockhouses of the American frontier, surrounded by a pali¬ 
sade and earthworks. In the reign of Alfred of England many 
strongholds were being built for defense against the Danes. 
A circular ditch was dug, thirty feet deep, and the dirt thrown 
up in the center to form a mound or truncated cone, thirty 
feet high. On the top of the mound a blockhouse was erected. 
Such a blockhouse would be a “city of refuge” for the peas¬ 
antry for miles around. The first castles of stone appeared 
towards the end of the eleventh century. These were elabo¬ 
rate affairs, or became so in course of time. In their building 
comfort was strictly subordinated to defense, even in the living 
quarters of the baronial household. The idealized picture of 
the palatial living quarters of the mediaeval castle which most 
of us have in mind belongs to a later and less warlike age. 

We must think of the castle as a part of a well planned system 
of defense for the whole countryside. Besides the central “keep” 
or citadel there were concentric rings of fortifications offering 
successive lines of defense. Inside the fortifications there was 
space for outbuildings, housing the provisions of the garrison, 
and sheltering the cattle of the peasantry in time of war. The 
whole enclosure might be surrounded by a moat, over which 
access to the castle was had by the lowered drawbridge. In the 
evening, or in time of danger, the drawbridge would be raised, 
the gates closed, and the portcullis lowered. The duty of castle- 
guard, the maintenance of the baronial household with its serv- 


208 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


ants, and the repair and upkeep of the walls and moat were 
burdens that had to be borne by the country round about and 
that called for a military and economic organization which had 
to be carefully thought out. In time of peace the castle-yard 
was almost a microcosm of mediaeval life. There met and 
mingled priests, monks, pilgrims, knights, prisoners on their 
way to trial within the castle, peasants with cartloads of prov¬ 
ender for men and beasts, dog-keepers, merchants with their 
packs, wine-sellers with their casks, and more infrequent visitors, 
like strolling minstrels, men with dancing bears, and mere 
hangers-on and vagabonds. 

One who has never seen them can form little notion of the 
ingenuity with which castles were planned for defense by the 
medieval engineers. On the whole, defense outran offence, in 
the middle ages, and the best castles were practically impreg¬ 
nable. What this must have meant for the survival of civiliza¬ 
tion in a war-torn world it is impossible to estimate. Out of 
many illustrations of defensive skill we may take that of the 
castle of Carcassonne, a town in the south of France which has 
recently (1928) celebrated its two thousandth birthday. “The 
great castle of Carcassonne,” says Thompson, “secured peace 
and tranquillity to the large circle of territory round about for 
nearly three hundred years.” 1 This circle of territory had a 
radius of over twenty miles. 

Some details of its fortifications, the work of thirteenth cen¬ 
tury engineers, may be given. “The mediaeval engineer had 
nothing to learn from the modern machine-gun officer of cross¬ 
fire, flanking fire, . . . and concealment. Depending on gravi¬ 
tation and inferior mechanical forces instead of modern pro¬ 
pellants and explosives, they worked largely in the vertical 
plane instead of the horizontal, and they worked at point-blank 
range, but these were almost the only differences. Where now 
an unseen machine-gunner will put a dozen bullets into you 
at a distance of several hundred yards, the chatelains of Car¬ 
cassonne would drop a paving stone on your head from a posi¬ 
tion just as cunningly chosen. The most interesting single piece 
of fortification in the place is . . . the narrow path between 

1 Op. tit., p. 720. 


FEUDAL CIVILIZATION 


209 


battlemented walls up to the Porte de l’Aude. ... It is in the: 
form of a gradually widening funnel, sloping steeply, and 
planned in a series of angles. At its mouth there [is] ... a 
cross wall pierced by a small gate which the enemy would have 
first to force. On arriving at the first angle he was confronted 
by a steep, straight section, barred at intervals by four trans¬ 
verse walls, like bulkheads in a ship, each with a small gateway 
en echelon —that is, alternately on the right and on the left, 
so that he could shoot only through one at a time. The side 
walls and cross walls were crowned by wooden galleries from 
which a shower of projectiles was poured upon him. After 
passing through all these gates (which he was unlikely to do), 
the enemy had to make a right-angled turn to the right and 
pass along the foot of the outer wall of the city, under heavy 
bombardment. There were then three more gates, each pro¬ 
tected by overhead galleries, and finally a narrow corridor, 
covered by two superimposed galleries, each provided with 
loopholes for crossbowmen and machicoulis , or traps, through 
which stones, molten metal, and every kind of missile could be 
thrown. If the enemy succeeded in getting into the first gallery, 
a gate could be closed behind him from the gallery above, and 
he was trapped; if he got into the second gallery, the only exit 
was through a labyrinth of passages which could be barricaded 
instantly at a dozen points. In short, it was practically impos¬ 
sible to force the Porte de FAude unless the castle itself could 
first be demolished.” 1 

The Mediaeval Manor 

It is time we turned to the ‘Tower side” of feudalism, for 
however interesting it may be to read of the doings of lords 
and ladies of high degree, the way of life of the non-noble classes, 
including as they did well over ninety per cent of the popula¬ 
tion, should concern us more nearly. As the Freshman wrote, 
in his zeal to exhibit his understanding of feudal life, in the 
middle ages “we the people would have been serfs.” An under¬ 
standing of the life of the non-noble classes resolves itself into 
an understanding of the mediaeval manor, for the manorial 

1 London Times, July 14, 1928. 


210 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


system prevailed all over central and western Europe and in a 
large part of the British Isles. It was at once “a form of govern¬ 
ment, a structure of society [and] an economic regime.” 1 In 
origin it is older than the upper or political side of feudalism, 
being already established by the end of the ninth century while 
the latter was not yet fully developed. As in the case with 
political feudalism, the origins of the manorial system are still 
obscure, and a great many questions which may be asked can¬ 
not be answered. Like political feudalism, too, the origins of 
the manor seem to lie in both a Roman and a German source, 
but in this case the Roman origins seem to be more important 
than the German. 

Roman Origins 

The manorial system is as old as the later Roman Empire, 
being met with in the Roman villa, the prevailing agricultural 
unit of those centuries. The core of the villa was the demesne 
or “home” farm, which was in the direct occupancy and control 
of the landlord himself, or his agent. This demesne land was 
cultivated by the coloni , who also paid their lord stated “rents” 
in money or in kind. A necessary adjunct of the demesne farm, 
therefore, were barns and granaries in which to store the pay¬ 
ments in kind due from the tenants. Around the demesne farm 
clustered the farm lands of the coloni , from which they must 
wrest a living for themselves as well as “rent” for their lord. 
Further details about the physical layout of the villse and the 
course of agriculture need not be explored here. It will suffice to 
note that the Roman villa presented all the features of the later 
manor including, after the breakdown of Roman local adminis¬ 
tration, the political control of the villagers by their landlord. 
The villa was indigenous in Italy and in southern Gaul, in the later 
Roman Empire, and possibly in other regions, even in Britain. 

Germanic Origins 

When we turn to the Germanic origins of the manor we 
quickly raise problems which cannot be solved. There are, in 
general, two schools of thought. Some scholars think that free 
village communities, with their communal agricultural and 

1 Thompson, op. cit., p. 726. 


FEUDAL CIVILIZATION 


211 


pastoral arrangements, had disappeared long before the Ger¬ 
mans came into contact with Rome, and that among the Ger¬ 
mans there were only unfree villagers in economic and political 
dependence upon a landlord. That is, something very like the 
villa had developed among the Germans also so that, when the 
two peoples, German and Roman, came into contact, fusion 
into one manorial form was both natural and easy. 

Other scholars hold that the free village community was the 
rule among the Germans when they came into contact with 
Rome and, indeed, for some centuries later. However, the 
communal agricultural arrangements of the free villages were 
found to be economically wasteful as compared with the more 
efficient organisation of the Roman villa. Landlords every¬ 
where sought to introduce the latter at the expense of the 
former. This movement was greatly hastened by the century 
of civil wars and disorders in the later Merovingian period. 
Powerful and greedy landlords wrought their will upon the free 
villagers, depressing them into serfdom. Villages “full of free 
landholders” became “manors full of villeins”. Or, more pre¬ 
cisely, the landlord, taking advantage of the disorders of the 
time and the desperate plight of the small freemen, superimposed 
a demesne farm upon each village, compelling the villagers to 
cultivate the demesne land and to give the landlord payments 
in kind. The villagers’ own plots of land, which they had for¬ 
merly “owned”, they now occupied and cultivated at the will 
of their lord, to whom the right of “ultimate ownership” had 
passed. The lord’s demesne land was usually secured, no doubt, 
by the simple process of pushing some of the villagers off the 
land altogether. However, no good purpose will be served by 
concerning ourselves further with the question of origins. 
Probably the theory of the originally free village community 
of the Germans gradually losing its freedom and becoming 
assimilated in form to the villa of Roman origin better fits the 
few facts that are incontestable. 

Essential Features of the Manor 

We may now turn to a systematic study of the manor itself. 
If, in what follows, a manor of a pretty completely agricultural 


212 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


type seems to be held up for examination, it should be remem¬ 
bered that there were “pastoral” as well as “agricultural” 
manors. The difference was in degree rather than in kind. In 
the “pastoral” manor agricultural arrangements remained 
primitive because there was little arable land and the villagers 
depended largely upon their flocks and herds for a livelihood 
for themselves and for “rent” for their lord. Even the most 
completely agricultural manor did not dispense entirely with 
flocks and herds; neither does the average farm of to-day. 

First, let us form some notion of the size of these manorial 
villages and of the number of persons in a manorial community. 
Like modern farms there was the greatest variety of size, but 
on the whole mediaeval manors were larger than American farms 
of the present. A manorial village of fewer than twenty house¬ 
holds and less than one thousand acres of arable land must have 
been somewhat uncommon. Factors like fertility of the soil 
and proportion of arable to waste land would have much to do 
with the question of size. A manor had to be large enough to 
be a self-sufficing economic unit for the population living upon 
it, for the manorial community was, first of all, self-sufficient. 
Shelter, food, clothing, fuel, even the rude agricultural tools, 
were found or made right in the manor itself. In a time when 
all “social services” were non-existent, or practically so, each 
village had to be a self-sufficing economic unit if human life 
were to be sustained. Mill, bake-oven, forge, parish church 
and graveyard, even a village bull, were essentials of rural life 
which every manorial village must needs possess. As a general 
rule the huts of the villagers, each with its small plot of land 
or kitchen garden, were in a little cluster along the one street 
of the village, “main street”. This is the “nucleated” or com¬ 
pact type of manorial village. The manor house or hall of the 
lord of the manor would stand somewhat apart, on the best site. 
A brook or stream of water in or near the village was the essen¬ 
tial water supply. Dammed up, it spread out into a mill pond 
to furnish power for the mill, for wind mills were rare and other 
sources of power practically unknown. Around the pond the 
marshy land grew reeds to be used in thatching roofs. Meadow 
land lay along either bank of the stream. 


FEUDAL CIVILIZATION 


213 


The Open Fields 

Radiating out from the village, fanwise, were the lanes and 
paths leading to the arable land and to the pasture and waste 
land of the manor. Here we come to a basic feature of the medi¬ 
aeval agricultural system, a feature called “champion farming,” 
or, less obscurely, “open-field husbandry/’ or the “three-field 
system.” That is, the arable land of the village lay in three 
great fields, each containing some hundreds of acres. In a 
given year only two of the fields were cultivated or cropped, 
while the third field was allowed to lie fallow and “rest ” so as 
to regain its fertility; and so on in rotation. This wasteful proc¬ 
ess, reducing the available farming acreage of the mediaeval 
world by one-third, was made necessary by the primitive farm¬ 
ing methods then in vogue. The value of deep or subsoil plow¬ 
ing was not understood, and in any case would have been be¬ 
yond the power of a crude plow with its team of scrawny 
oxen. Nor was the use of clover and other nitrate-producing 
trefoils known, and the use of fertilizers was not general or 
skillful. 

Yet we should give credit where credit is due. A two-field 
system had been universal among the early Germans and, 
amazingly enough, even the Roman agriculturists had never 
gone beyond it. It must be accounted one of the major con¬ 
tributions of mediaeval man to the advance of civilization that, 
during the course of the eighth century seemingly, a pretty 
general adoption of the three-field system took place. Thus, 
at one stroke, the acreage of arable land available for the pro¬ 
duction of food was increased by one-third. Nor was this all. 
A more than proportionate decrease in the amount of plowing 
was effected. For a fallow field must be plowed twice, once in 
the spring and again in the fall. A little calculation will demon¬ 
strate that while under the two-field system the mediaeval 
farmer had to plow three times the number of acres he reaped, 
under the three-field system he need plow only twice as many 
as he reaped. 

Under the three-field system, in a given year, field one would 
be plowed in the autumn and sowed with wheat or rye; field 


214 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


two would be plowed in the spring and sowed with oats or bar¬ 
ley or (field) peas. Both of these fields would be reaped in the 
autumn or late summer. Field three would lie fallow, being 
twice plowed. After the fall plowing it would be sowed with 
wheat or rye. 


Intermingled Strips 

Another feature of mediaeval farming, no less characteristic 
than the three-field system, was the intermingled strips. Sup¬ 
pose the typical householder of the village had a total holding 
of thirty acres. It follows from what has been said that he 
would have ten acres in each of the three fields. However, his 
ten acres would not lie all together in a compact block but 
would be divided into from ten to twenty acre and half-acre 
strips and scattered, as it were, broadcast throughout the en¬ 
tire field. In other words, each great field was subdivided into 
long, narrow strips. These are marked off from each other by 
thin balks of turf, left unplowed. What the origin of this ar¬ 
rangement may be is unknown, but it is very ancient. One sug¬ 
gestion is that the early village community, in its excessive 
zeal for equalitarianism, devised the plan of intermingled 
strips to assure that each householder should have a fair share 
of every sort of soil represented in the village lands. A more 
plausible theory is that, the huts of the villagers being clus¬ 
tered together, it seemed desirable that each cultivator should 
have to travel as far to his land as, and no farther than, any 
other. The scheme of intermingled strips secures this result. 
However, both theories leave something to be desired. 

Medleval Measurements 

From mediaeval “acres ” our modern system of land measure¬ 
ment is derived, as well as certain units of our linear measure. 
Each strip was a long narrow rectangle more or less equivalent 
to the modern statute acre. It represented the amount of land 
which could be plowed in a day by a single plow and team. The 
mediaeval plowing “day ” was a long morning, for in the after¬ 
noon the oxen had to be turned out to graze; hence morgen , 
the German word for acre. The plow team which turned the 


FEUDAL CIVILIZATION 


215 


sod of the mediaeval acres consisted of from four to eight oxen, 
runty and underfed. A team of two plow horses hitched to a 
14-inch steel plow can turn three acres in a day with ease, and 
a tractor pulling a gangplow will turn seventy-five. The medi¬ 
aeval acre was ten times as long as it was wide. Having plowed 
the length of the furrow, the oxen were turned round and they 
then plowed back. An acre, then, was a furrow long, whence 
our furlong. This was forty times the length of the pole or 
“rod” used in measurement. The rod was five and a half times 
as long as the small unit called the “cloth-yard”. The width 
of the acre strip was four rods, or “roods ”. It took 72 furrows 
to turn over this four rod strip of sod, so that the team, plow¬ 
man, and drivers walked nine miles in the course of their day’s 
plowing. It will be seen, of course, that a mediaeval foot race 
the length of a furrow is our two hundred and twenty yard 
dash, and the length of a furrow and back is our “four-forty ”. 

Pasture, Meadow, Wood, and Waste 

But no self-sufficient farm is made up wholly of plow land. 
There must be pasture land; there should be a meadow and a 
wood; and there is usually waste land not yet brought under 
the plow. Each mediaeval householder had, so to speak, “rights” 
in each of these, and his rights were proportioned to the num¬ 
ber of acres he held in the open fields. Following out our analogy 
we may call each householder a “shareholder” in all the en¬ 
terprises of the village community. Each had a right to turn 
a certain number of beasts of the plow and other cattle into 
the common pasture. The cattle of all the villagers were merged 
in a common herd, guarded by herdsmen and boys. After the 
sheaves had all been removed from the great fields, the fences 
around them were taken down and the village herd pastured the 
stubble. Even before the last sheaf was removed a shareholder 
might tether his horses on his own “lands” or strips, provided 
he was careful they committed no trespass. 

Pigs, the commonest of mediaeval animals, ran wild in the 
woods, feeding on the acorns and other “mast” there. The 
number of pigs a shareholder might turn into the woods was 
strictly limited, however. In the wood, also, the villagers had 


216 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the right to gather dead wood for fires and for other purposes. 
Green wood must not be cut without the lord’s permission, 
and then must be paid for; but so much dead wood as a man 
might pull down with a hook and carry home on his crook he 
might have. Meadow land was very precious, because it was 
so strictly limited. Not until the seventeenth century did 
men learn to grow hay where they wished by the grass-seeding 
process. Meadow land in the middle ages was limited to the 
grass that grew more or less rankly in the low-lying land next 
the brook and in other moist places. This meadow land when 
ripe for cutting was “lotted” among the shareholders. The total 
number of “rights” being known, the meadow was marked off 
by stones or stakes into a corresponding number of strips. Each 
shareholder then drew from a hat or half-bushel a stick notched 
in such a way as to denote a certain strip of the meadow, and 
that was his share for the year. Other “rights” of the share¬ 
holders were to gather reeds from the marsh, to cut turf from 
the bog, to fish in certain waters, and so on. 

Sorts and Conditions of Men 

But it is time we turned our attention to the “duties” of 
the villagers. As we have seen, the shareholders had a dual 
capacity in the economic life of the village. Not only must 
they win from the soil a living for themselves and their families 
and dependents, but they must also pay “rent” to their lord, 
from whom they hold their land and on whose sufferance they 
enjoyed the “rights” listed above. The order of importance, 
of course, was first “rent” and then living. But first we may 
consider the more general question of the sorts and conditions 
of men who made up the population of a mediaeval manor. 

We have assumed, so far, for convenience, that the manorial 
village was made up of a community of shareholders, more or 
less equal in status and in rights. This is not the whole truth. 
There were in most manors a few tenants of superior position, 
possessors of several shares and subject to the lord in only a 
slight measure, whether in economic obligation or in personal 
status. Such privileged tenants were commonly known as 
“freemen”. Next in the scale came the normal shareholders, so 


FEUDAL CIVILIZATION 


217 


to speak, the typical villeins, each villein holding thirty acres 
of land, more or less. The villeins owed their lord a substantial 
“rent”, and their personal status in relation to their lord was 
definitely unfree. Below these were the smaller tenants, cottag¬ 
ers, crofters, etc., holding but a few acres of land each, unfree 
in status, paying a heavy “rent”, and eking out a precarious 
living by casual labor in harvest time for the more prosperous 
villeins and freemen of the community. Slaves there were none, 
in the heyday of the manorial system. This was largely due 
to the fact that feudalism had no place in it for human beings 
absolutely without rights. When we recall that the civilizations 
of the ancient world, however brilliant, all rested upon a broad 
foundation of human slavery, we must feel increased respect for 
the middle ages which built up a civilization free from slavery. 

The Villein, Status and Services 

It will be well to examine more particularly the service and 
the status of the villeins and the freemen, that is, of the unfree 
and of the free, remembering that the population of even a 
single manor presented many variations of service and many 
gradations of status. It is frequently impossible, so finely were 
the lines drawn, to determine with accuracy whether a certain 
tenant was free or unfree. First, then, let us examine the vil¬ 
lein’s status and services. He was unfree, we are told, but 
his status must not be confused with slavery. The villein was 
no human chattel, without property or other rights, to be bought 
or sold at will. It is true he was “bound to the soil”; that is, 
he was not free to abandon his holding or leave the manor with¬ 
out his lord’s consent. If the manor was “sold”, the villeins 
went with the land. But then a modern renter, if the land he 
cultivates is sold, goes with the land, in a certain sense, merely 
changing landlords. Again, if the villein married, he was 
obliged to marry within the manor, unless he bought his lord’s 
consent to marry outside. Nor might he “put his son to clergy” 
without his lord’s consent. Of course he was obliged to go to 
his lord’s court, as often as he was summoned, to answer for 
his rents and services and for his petty misdemeanors, if any. 
There also he testified to the customs of the manor and sat 


218 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


in judgment on his fellow villeins. However, the land the 
villein cultivated and the communal rights he enjoyed in 
meadow, wood, and pasture he enjoyed by hereditary right, 
according to the custom of the manor. In other words, there 
was law here, and no self-respecting lord would violate it. The 
manor may have been a monarchy, but it was a constitutional 
monarchy. 

So much for the status of the villein, the unfree tenant of 
the manor. Let us now turn to his services. Here is a villein 
of the year 1250, living on a manor belonging to the lord abbot 
of Ramsey, in England. He is a virgater, that is, he is a typical 
villein, holding 30 acres of land, or ten in each of the three 
fields. His rents and services are as follows. From 29 Septem¬ 
ber to 29 June, the off season, so to speak, he works on Mondays 
and Wednesdays at whatever his lord may require, and on 
Fridays he plows with all his team, that is, with all the beasts 
of the plow he possesses. During the early or autumn weeks 
of the season, from 29 September to 11 November, he must also 
plow and harrow one-half acre of wheat land and sow it with 
his own seed. For this he is excused one day’s work. If a plow 
day falls upon a Holy Day, or if the weather is bad, the plow¬ 
ing must be made up some other day. However, during two 
weeks at Christmas and one week each at Easter and Whitsun¬ 
tide he is excused from all work. 

Coming to the busy season, 29 June to 29 September, the 
villein must work for his lord five days a week. Of course har¬ 
vest falls in this period, when all hands must be pressed into 
service to take the fullest advantage of whatever good weather 
may be vouchsafed by Providence. In addition to his usual 
five days a week this villein is bound to put in three extra days’ 
work in harvest, boon-works, as they were called, coming when¬ 
ever the lord requires his service, with all his family, except 
his wife. On those days the lord is bound by custom to furnish 
the workers with a certain amount of food and drink. Nor is 
the tale of the villein’s services complete yet. Sometime be¬ 
tween June 29 and the end of harvest he must do six carryings, 
that is, come with his cart and haul six loads of hay, grain, or 
whatever is required, at the lord’s convenience. Of payments 


FEUDAL CIVILIZATION 


219 


in kind this villein owed little. At Christmas he must brew 
two quarters of malt, for which he was excused two days’ work. 
He must also give his lord three hens, a cock, and four pence 
in money, a kind of Christmas present. At Easter he must 
give his lord ten eggs. 

In other manors, where the amount of the lord’s demesne land 
was small and the labor service required therefore negligible, 
the payments in kind were much increased. Certain of the 
lord abbot of Ramsey’s manors were required to furnish every 
two weeks “12 quarters of flour, 2000 loaves of bread, 24 gal¬ 
lons of beer, 48 gallons of malt, 2 sesters of honey, 10 fletchers of 
bacon, 10 rounds of cheese, 10 very best sucking pigs, 14 lambs, 
14 geese, 120 chickens, 2000 eggs, 2 tubs of butter, 24 gallons of 
audit ale. In Lent the bacon and the cheese were struck off and 
money paid in their stead.” 1 

The Freeman 

With the status and services of the villeins we may now con¬ 
trast those of a typical freeman of the same period, also a ten¬ 
ant on one of Ramsey’s manors. His holding was one hide of 
land, that is, four virgates, or 120 acres. For this holding he 
must furnish a plow and team for plowing the lord’s land 
during the plowing season. Notice that he does not have to 
come himself; nor does he owe “uncertain” service as the vil¬ 
leins do. During harvest he must send all his men one day a 
week to help on the lord’s land, and he must come himself (or 
send some one), not to work but to see that his men do their 
work well. He also owes a cash rent of two shillings a year. 
His services, then, are not menial, nor are they uncertain, but 
“fixed”. Further, the freeman is not bound to the soil but is 
free to dispose of his land in any way he pleases, provided 
only that the “sale” or transfer takes place in open court, 
in the lord’s presence, and that the new tenant is personally 
acceptable to the lord, does homage, and pays the customary 
relief. Men of the status of freeman were not numerous. In 
England, at the Norman Conquest, villeins and “half-villeins” 
totaled seventy per cent of the population, being thirty-eight 

1 Cambridge Mediaeval History , III, 475. 


220 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


and thirty-two per cent, respectively. Freemen formed less 
than twenty per cent of the population. 

Varieties of Services and Duties 

Though it is correct to say that the population of a manor 
consisted of free and unfree, this classification is too simple to be 
the whole truth. Each status merged into the other by grada¬ 
tion so fine as to be practically indistinguishable. Each manor, 
being a little world in itself, presents a somewhat different 
picture, also. The varieties of service and status from manor 
to manor, and even within a given manor, were very great. 
Here is a villein, owing labor service certainly, but labor service 
of a quite definite character. He must thresh one bushel of 
corn and two bushels of oats; toss and turn hay till the rick be 
made in the lord’s meadow; furnish one fork, one rope, two 
oxen, one wain, and one man for carting the lord’s hay; reap, 
bind, and stack one acre of wheat, one-half acre of oats, and 
do the carting as above; and while doing this service he may 
have one sheaf made with a band long enough to go twice 
around the reeve’s head, and two loads of oats; and he may 
unyoke his oxen in the meadow until the wain be filled. He 
may also put his sons to learning and marry his daughters with¬ 
out the lord’s leave. 

Here is another freeman whose services, exceptional though 
they be, do not give too exaggerated a notion of the nature of 
mediaeval life. This freeman held his land by service of attend¬ 
ing church on Palm Sunday with a new cart whip, cracking it 
three times in the church porch, and then marching up the 
middle aisle with the whip on his shoulder and sitting in the 
lord’s pew. There he remained until the minister came to the 
second lesson. Then, kneeling on a mat in front of the reading 
desk, he was to hold the whip over the minister’s head, with a 
purse containing thirty pieces of silver hanging from the end, 
while the second lesson was being read. The tenant then re¬ 
turned to his seat and, at the close of the service, left the whip 
and the purse at the manor house. The thirty pieces of silver 
were the rent-money, of course. Still more bizarre was the 
service paid by another freeman—“a snowball at Midsummer 


FEUDAL CIVILIZATION 


221 


and a red rose at Christmas.” Services as peculiar as these 
were not uncommon in feudal society. 

We have seen that every tenant of arable land, free and un¬ 
free, owed his lord services for his land. In a sense it was the 
land which owed these services, rather than the tenant. But 
beyond this, every lord used his manor and its population as a 
source of revenue in many other ways, “exploiting” his de¬ 
pendents with endless ingenuity. There were in every manor 
certain conveniences or even necessities which the lord monop¬ 
olized, compelling his tenants, great and small, to make use of 
them. Such were the mill, the bake-oven, and the brewery, 
each levying a substantial toll for services rendered. The 
French called these monopolies banalites. Then there were cer¬ 
tain compulsory services or corvees, such as the mending of 
roads, the repair of bridges, ditching, and so on. And, finally, 
the levying of a direct tax, or taille, on each household, was a 
prerogative frequently exercised by mediaeval lords. The un¬ 
free tenants were taxable at the will of the lord, taillable a merely 
in most cases, it would seem. 

The Village Community 

Thus far we have dealt with the manor as a group of tenants 
in relation to their lord. This is the phase of local life best 
known to us to-day, because manorial records that have come 
down to us are nearly all records made by the lord or his agents 
and they reflect, therefore, the lord’s view of manorial life. 
But the manor was much more than a group of tenants bound 
together by their common obligation to a lord. It was also a 
village community. This community of villagers, which, so to 
speak, lay underneath the manor, is worthy of more than a 
passing thought. We may take the view that the village com¬ 
munity of feudal days was the pale ansemic survivor of the full- 
blooded free village community. Or we may think that it was 
a community which developed out of a group of dependents 
in common subjection to their lord as members of a self-sufficing 
economic unit. Each view may be part of the truth. Certainly 
a good deal of self-governing activity was made necessary by 
the system of open-field husbandry. Some great authorities 


222 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


have held that this was not so—that the open-field farming 
went forward in a purely automatic way. Such students cannot 
have entered very imaginatively into the agricultural problem 
involved. In any case, the discovery of early by-laws enacted 
by some of these village communities rescues us from the bar¬ 
ren field of speculation. The fact is the “shareholders ” of the 
village were ceaselessly active in administering and regulating 
the economic affairs of the local unit. 

Lot of the Common People Then and Now 

It is inevitable and natural that we should wish to compare 
the lot in life of the common people of the middle ages with the 
lot in life of the common people of to-day. This is a task that 
would fill many volumes and transcend the capacity of any one 
writer. The living conditions of mediaeval peasants seem intol¬ 
erable to us, being more those of animals than of men. The 
hut of the peasant was of thatch or of wood, more rarely of 
stone, with a thatched roof which seldom excluded the damp. 
A single room made privacy all but impossible for the various 
members of the household. The floor was of dirt or clay; the 
beds were piles of straw, vermin-infested and usually damp; and 
the peasants slept in their clothes. There were no chimneys, 
so the smoke from the fire had to escape through the door or 
the windows after half-choking and blinding the occupants of 
the cottage. There was no artificial light whatever aside from 
that given out by the fire. 

However, we should not allow ourselves to be too much de¬ 
pressed by this picture. Standards of living are very largely 
relative, and human beings are amazingly adaptable. The mod¬ 
ern explorer or soldier finds it possible to live in comfort and 
content under conditions which seem impossible to those who 
have had no actual experience of them. One can imagine that 
the mediaeval peasant would be stifled by the close confinement 
and super-heated atmosphere of a modern apartment and long 
for his rude thatched cottage again. And however “unhealth¬ 
ful” we may think the housing of the peasant was, we must 
remember that vigorous outdoor life all the year round was 
just beyond his doorstep. 


FEUDAL CIVILIZATION 


223 


As to food products, farms produced then very much what 
they produce now. Potatoes and corn (maize) are practically the 
only products which were not known to the mediaeval farmer. 
Sugar was unknown and the chief source of sweetening was 
honey. In fact, bee culture was much more important, propor¬ 
tionally, then than now. Beeswax was employed for candles 
and for sealing documents. The commonest meat was the flesh 
of swine. The relative lack of hay or fodder made it impossible 
to care for large herds of cattle. In fact, the small herd which 
a village might have was thinned down to a mere nucleus each 
autumn, and the meat salted down. Even so, the lack of fodder 
was so extreme and the cattle that were wintered grew so weak 
that they sometimes had to be carried out to pasture in the 
spring. Sheep, where kept, were grown for their wool and their 
hides, valuable for vellum, the only writing “paper” known to 
mediaeval man. 

Before we decide to pity the peasant we should recall that, 
however badly off he was, he was not a pauper. The modern 
problem of poverty, with elaborate public and private organisa¬ 
tion for its relief, was unknown in the middle ages. The mediaeval 
peasants may have been unfree, that is, not free to improve their 
position in life,—to rise, as we say; but they were not free to 
sink, either. “Certain of always being fed, lodged, warmed by 
the fruits of their labor, . . . sheltered from every need, they 
never felt the anguish of poverty or the fear of falling into it.” 1 

For Further Reading 

G. B. Adams, Civilization during the Middle Ages, chap. 9 
J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 
chaps. 26 and 27 

Cambridge Mediaeval History, II, chap. 20; III, chap. 18 
C. Seignobos, The Feudal Regime (Translated by E. W. Dow) 

F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond 
J. W. Thompson, Feudal Germany 
M. Bateson, Mediaeval England 
Eileen Power, Mediaeval People 
F. W. Cornish, Chivalry 

W. C. Meller, A Knight’s Life in the Days of Chivalry 

1 Comte de Segur, quoted by Funck-Brentano, The Middle Ages, p. 15. 


224 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


C. W. C. Oman, The Art of War in the Middle Ages 
W. S. Davis, Life on a Mediaeval Barony 
H. 0. Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind, I, chaps. 23 and 24 
P. M. Boissonade, Life and Work in Mediaeval Europe 
G. G. Coulton, The Mediaeval Village 

W. R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas , p. 104 (plan of a mediaeval manor) 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 


ORIGIN OF THE GERMAN NATION; FOUNDING 
OF THE MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE 

The Nation-State 

It has been said that the modem nation-state is the most 
important political and social development of European his¬ 
tory. Even in this age of the growth of internationalism and 
the talk of a United States of Europe, the nation-state remains 
the dominant political unit, and the sentiment of nationality 
is the strongest social tie. A nation is a nationality which has 
organized itself into a political body. A nationality is a popula¬ 
tion held together by feeling. 

This feeling, or sentiment, of nationality is kindled by a 
number of favoring factors. First, there should be a common 
homeland, if possible, a well defined physical area, well endowed 
with natural resources of considerable variety. Secondly, there 
should be a common language, with a literature in which the 
aspirations of the race have found expression and in which the 
national memory is enshrined. Thirdly, a common religion is 
an essential factor during certain stages of national development, 
and a favoring factor at all stages. Fourthly, common tradition 
is essential in a nation, “a sense of memories” attaching to the 
national heroes under whose leadership the nation has defended 
its homeland and secured to posterity the blessings of “life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” “Avoir fait de grandes 
choses ensemble, vouloir en faire encore, voila la condition es- 
sentielle pour etre un peuple,” as Renan says. This will ex¬ 
plain and in a measure justify the popular tendency to idealize 
the nation's heroes, especially those whose lineaments the mists 
of time have softened or obscured. 

The ancestor of the nation-state is the feudal kingdom. Yet 
how little like its modern offspring was this feudal parent! In 

225 


226 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the ninth and tenth centuries, when feudalism was establishing 
itself as a form of government, Italy was a “geographical ex¬ 
pression ”, divided among Saracenic, Byzantine, Papal, Lom¬ 
bard, and other rulers. Spain, the Christian Spain of to-day, 
must be sought among the tiny Christian principalities in the 
Pyrenees in which some sparks of resistance to Mohammedan 
conquest remained alive. Scandinavian and Slavic peoples 
were still pagan, that is, quite outside the pale of western civili¬ 
zation. Only Germany, France, and England bore any resem¬ 
blance to their present selves. Yet not one of these three had 
yet secured the boundaries within which their destiny was to 
be worked out. Not one had a common language. Not one had 
a glimmer of any common national feeling. However, Germany, 
France, and England had each organized itself into a political 
body by the end of the ninth century, and in each the people 
were united by a common allegiance to the Roman church. It 
will be well to examine more particularly the conditions under 
which, in each one of these three kingdoms, the first stages of 
national development were passed through, carrying the story 
forward, in each case, to the twelfth century. 

The Beginnings of Germany 

We will begin with Germany, destined to become the strong¬ 
est of early mediaeval states. We have seen that Germany, or 
the kingdom of the East Franks, was one of the larger fragments 
into which the Frankish empire was broken by the disinte¬ 
grating forces of the ninth century. Tribal feeling among the 
Saxons, Franconians, Suabians, and Bavarians was still strong, 
and among each of these people a local duke had established 
himself and his dynasty. These dukes conducted themselves 
as sovereign princes, for the most part, having little to do with 
each other or with the king who was the nominal overlord of 
them all. A tradition of union under a king, inherited from 
Carolingian days, was the most important, if not the only, 
asset of the infant German state. We have already seen how 
the Carolingian dynasty was eliminated in the course of the 
ninth century, and how the feudal magnates, after choosing as 
their king Conrad, duke of Franconia, (911-918), next fixed 


GERMAN NATION; MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE 


227 


upon Henry, duke of Saxony. With this king, Henry I (918- 
936), and his son Otto I (936-972), we may begin our survey 
of German history. Both these princes were skillful military 
leaders and good organizers, and of Otto it can be said, if not 
also of Henry, that he was a farsighted statesman. What Henry 
began Otto took over and developed greatly, so that we may 
consider the two reigns, covering just over half a century, as a 
single period of history. 

Germany’s Eastward Expansion 

Without doubt the greatest achievements of these two kings 
were the bringing of invasions to an end and the inauguration 
of a policy of expansion. On the north and all along the eastern 
frontier Germany had been subject to invasions by pagan 
Northmen, Slavs, and Hungarians for a century, following the 
death of Charlemagne. The great emperor’s aggressive policy 
of expansion had been checked, and ground had been lost. 
Penetrating to the very heart of Saxony, and even entering 
Franconia and Suabia, the invaders had been a potent factor 
in the breakdown of central authority in Germany and in the 
development of feudalism. 

Henry the Fowler and his son Otto took up the task where 
Charlemagne had laid it down. Henry defeated the Danes and 
compelled them to withdraw beyond the Eider. Otto main¬ 
tained this northern frontier line, defeating Harold Blue Tooth, 
who broke through the line (965), and establishing the mark of 
Schleswig beyond the Eider, to fortify the Danish frontier. 
East of the lower Elbe and its westernmost tributary, the Saale, 
were the Slavs—Wends, Abotrites, Daleminzes, Redarii, Lusa- 
tians, Bohemians, and others. These tribes were still pagans 
and a great menace to the Germans. King Henry and his lieu¬ 
tenants led many campaigns against them, making Christianity 
a condition of peace. Even so had Charlemagne dealt with the 
ancestors of these very Saxons who now fought the Slavs. Henry 
built strongholds along the Slav frontier, after the manner of 
Alfred the Great of England, whose granddaughter he secured 
in marriage for his son Otto. “Groups of nine families were 
formed, one to live in a town and repair the walls, eight to work 


228 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


in the country, but to retire to the shelter of a town in case of 
invasion.” The king of the Bohemians was compelled to ac¬ 
knowledge Henry's overlordship and to pay tribute, and this 
arrangement was continued under Otto. 

South and east of the Slavs were the Magyars and Huns, 
more formidable fighters than the Slavs and a constant menace 
to Germany and Italy. In the middle of Henry's reign the Mag¬ 
yars invaded Saxony and compelled Henry to promise tribute 
(924). In Otto's reign the Huns again rode westward into Sua- 
bia. At the head of a united Germany, and with some assistance 
from his Bohemian allies, Otto broke the power of the Huns at 
the battle of Lechfeld, near Augsburg (955). The Huns then 
settled down in Hungary, where they still remain, and further 
danger from that quarter was provided against by the estab¬ 
lishment of a Bavarian East Mark, the future Austria. 

Thus the system of frontier marks, begun by Charlemagne, 
was renewed by Henry the Fowler and completed by Otto the 
Great. By the end of Otto’s reign the whole northern and eastern 
frontier of Germany was fringed with them. On the north 
was the mark of Schleswig. The northernmost of the east marks 
was the mark of the Billungs, bordering the Baltic. Next, pro¬ 
ceeding from north to south, came the Saxon North Mark, 
the Saxon East Mark, the mark of Brandenburg, destined to 
become a great state in modern times, the marks of Merseburg, 
Lausitz, and Meissen, and lastly, the Bavarian North Mark and 
East Mark. 

With the establishment of these organized frontier communi¬ 
ties the eastward march of Germany began. For centuries this 
march continued, until sixty per cent of the territory of modern 
Germany had been wrested from the Slavs and colonized. Of 
course a few small enclaves of Slavs remained in the territory 
thus colonized by German farmers, such as the Slav villages 
still to be found near Berlin. This steady eastward trend of 
German settlement, with its sequence of successive frontiers, 
has been aptly compared to the frontier movement in American 
history. “At bottom both movements were a search for free 
and cheap land by a farming people.” 1 Land values in “Old 

1 Thompson, op. cit., p. 517. 


GERMAN NATION; MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE 


229 


Germany ” rose continuously, and this made the frontier an 
ever present outlet for successive generations of young German 
farmers. This eastward expansion of Germany, going on stead¬ 
ily through the whole course of the middle ages, transcends in 
importance all other processes of German history during that 
period. It is indeed “the great deed of the German people in 
the Middle Ages.” 


The Feudal Kingship 

The beginning of Germany’s eastward march is the greatest 
claim to fame of these first two German kings of the Saxon line. 
In this Henry and Otto were truly national leaders. But is there 
any evidence of “national” leadership at home? Through 
our study of political feudalism we have been able to form a 
concept of the peculiar character of the feudal kingship. Caro- 
lingian kings had maintained direct contact with each of their 
subjects, judging, taxing, and commanding them. Under those 
monarchs public authority flowed from a single central source 
and extended outward to the remotest frontiers and downward 
to the smallest local unit, as we have seen. With a tradition 
of descent from the tribal gods, and being crowned and anointed 
by the Christian clergy, the king of earlier times had been 
a “sovereign”. 

The feudal kingship was a different office. The feudal king 
was no longer “sovereign,” but “suzerain”. Direct contact was 
no longer maintained between king and subjects but only between 
the feudal king and a small body of tenants-in-chief. Public 
authority no longer flowed from a single central source. It 
was divided and had many local sources, for within his own feu¬ 
dal principality, with respect to his own tenants and subtenants, 
each feudal baron was a petty “king”. Yet the older tradition 
of the Carolingian kingship remained. Any feudal king worth 
his salt would wish to transform “suzerain” into “sovereign”, 
to transform his feudal overlordship into a national leader¬ 
ship, to build up a centralized government and destroy feudal 
“particularism”; in one word, to substitute “modern” for 
“mediaeval ” in all that relates to monarchy, for the forces of the 
future were all on the side of the forward-looking monarchs. 


230 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Henry the Fowler a Feudal King 

It will be recognized that in their attempt to transform “su¬ 
zerain” into “sovereign” feudal kings faced a task of the greatest 
difficulty; for political feudalism, once firmly rooted in the soil 
of local interest and traditions, was well-nigh ineradicable. 
In mediaeval Germany the task was at least as difficult as any¬ 
where in western Europe. Henry the Fowler made no move in 
this field of action, seemingly, and may not have even sensed 
the problem. It is usual to refer to Henry as a “consciously 
feudal king”, content with such support as his fellow dukes 
chose to give him. During his reign each duke continued as 
before to play the king in his own principality, making “foreign” 
alliances, coining money, and nominating bishops and abbots. 
Civil war in France brought an accession of feudal authority 
to the German king when Gilbert, duke of Lorraine, renounced 
the French connection and accepted Henry the Fowler’s over¬ 
lordship, marrying Henry’s daughter, Gerberga (928). Thus 
began the shuttle-like story of Lorraine, the two latest chapters 
of which are within the memories of men still living. 

The Family Policy of Otto I 

It can scarcely be doubted that Otto, in contrast with his 
father, had a very definite idea of the problem of the German 
kingship, and he seems to have early made up his mind that 
it should play a leading part in German history. Formal 
coronation and anointment by the clergy, from which his father 
had turned aside, Otto sought. At the coronation banquet his 
fellow dukes were servitors, bearing their king food and drink, 
and thus reviving the forms and ceremonies of the Carolingian 
court. In his attempt to bind the feudal principalities more 
closely to his throne Otto then inaugurated a “family policy”. 
A favorable occasion for launching this policy was a feudal re¬ 
bellion in which some of his own brothers had taken part, but 
which Otto, and this gives us the measure of the man, succeeded 
in crushing. Saxony, of course, was his own. Franconia, also, 
he kept in his own hands. Lorraine was given to a son-in-law, 
Conrad the Red. Otto’s younger brother, Henry, was made 


GERMAN NATION; MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE 


231 


duke of Bavaria and married to a daughter of the late duke. 
Suabia was given to Otto’s own son Ludolf, who likewise mar¬ 
ried a daughter of the former duke. 

In each duchy Otto appointed an officer to look out for the 
royal interests. These officers, non-feudal in character, were 
known as Counts of the Palace, or Counts Palatine. It only re¬ 
mains to be said that Otto’s “ family policy ” was a flat failure. 
The new dukes identified themselves with local traditions, 
still very strong. They fought among themselves and against 
their king, even inviting in the Huns. Otto decided to “cut his 
losses ”, and he replaced two of the dukes by their sons and dis¬ 
placed two other ducal families entirely. 

Otto’s Ecclesiastical Policy 

The king’s next policy was a far cleverer one, having in it 
the elements of statesmanship. This we may call his “ ecclesi¬ 
astical policy ”. Already, much of the land of the church was 
held in feudal tenure, owing the king military service and gov¬ 
ernment work. Archbishops, bishops, and abbots were barons, 
appearing in the feudal array mail-clad, at the head of their 
knights. The two archbishops of Cologne and Mainz, the most 
important clerics in Germany, had ducal rank. Otto proposed 
to carry this feudalizing and secularizing of the church in Ger¬ 
many still further. He founded new bishoprics and abbeys, 
especially in the frontier fringe of marks, endowing them richly 
with lands, to be held of him by noble service. He even 
founded a new archbishopric, that of Magdeburg, in the mark 
of Brandenburg. 

Furthermore, Otto reserved the right of appointing these 
high ecclesiastical officials, thus making sure of getting incum¬ 
bents who would be loyal vassals. His brother Bruno, Otto 
made archbishop of Cologne. To the archbishopric of Mainz 
the king appointed an illegitimate son, William. When we re¬ 
call that approximately one-third of the land of Germany was 
in the hands of the church, we can form some estimate of the 
importance of Otto’s policy of binding the church lands of Ger¬ 
many to the throne. Further, these ecclesiastics made excellent 
administrators and royal ministers. Archbishop Bruno admin- 


232 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


istered the duchy of Lorraine for Otto for a period of years. 
Otto formed a sort of chancery at his court, consisting of a 
group of secretaries who assisted him in the transaction of pub¬ 
lic business. The members of the chancery were clerics, trained 
in the law and imbued with some at least of the Roman tradi¬ 
tions of centralized authority. One reason for Otto’s later in¬ 
vasion of Italy was that he might secure papal sanction for his 
control over the German clergy. As we shall see, this policy of 
secularizing the church, this placing of the church in a position 
of feudal dependence upon the king, was not without elements 
of grave danger to the church itself. The mediaeval church had 
a great role to play as the spiritualizing, even the civilizing, 
agency of society. If the great princes of the church, archbish¬ 
ops, bishops, and abbots, were to be chosen by feudal princes 
for their qualities as barons, with only an afterthought given 
to their qualities as spiritual leaders, could the church fulfill 
its high mission? 

As yet, however, no one was thinking about these matters, 
least of all Otto, who, though he made the church subservient 
to the monarchy, did so from the best of motives and counted 
himself a loyal son of the church, always eager to strengthen 
its organisation and foster its interests. 

Otto’s Intervention in Italy 

In addition to his work as German king, Otto became a Euro¬ 
pean figure, the most important since the death of Charle¬ 
magne. The first great German king “ began a new develop¬ 
ment of western history that was to last nearly three centuries, 
and was to determine its general direction up to the Reforma¬ 
tion.” 1 We may well doubt whether Otto had any such devel¬ 
opment in mind when he cautiously embarked upon the policy 
of intervention in Italy that was to carry him so far afield. 

Italy was a sort of “ Mexican border ” in Otto’s reign. Affairs 
in the peninsula had come to such a pass that the intervention 
of the king of Germany was a matter of necessity, not of choice. 
On the north Italy was still the prey of invasions by Huns. On 
the south the Saracens carried on their forays to the mainland 

1 Tout, quoted by Wm. Edwards, Notes on European History , I, 84. 


GERMAN NATION; MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE 


233 


from their bases in Sicily. A succession of Lombard rulers con¬ 
tinued to call themselves kings of Italy but, aside from Lom¬ 
bardy where their authority was traditionally acknowledged 
by the local feudatories, these kings had only a “paper ” king¬ 
dom. The popes maintained an independent authority in Rome 
and its environs and struggled to wrest from the Lombard 
rulers the control over the exarchate of Ravenna. East and 
south of Rome were the independent dukedoms of Spoleto and 
Benevento. Still further south the Eastern Empire stubbornly 
clung to its control over the tip of the peninsula. Otto crossed 
the Alps into Italy three times, in 951, 962, and 966. On the 
last occasion he remained six years. We may feel sure that 
during these repeated visits Otto must have given much thought 
to his Italian policy. 

Otto’s first intervention came naturally enough. A struggle 
was going on in Lombardy between rival claimants to the 
throne. Otto’s son Ludolf, duke of Suabia, and Otto’s brother 
Henry, duke of Bavaria, each of whom had an Italian frontier, 
intervened on opposite sides. This gave the king much concern. 
One of the claimants, Adelaide, widow of a former king, fled 
to Otto’s court, and this heightened his concern, for Adelaide 
was a lady of considerable charm. Leading an army of his 
Saxons southward, Otto easily effected the conquest of Lom¬ 
bardy. He married Adelaide and made the “kingdom of Italy” 
his feudal dependency. To secure the gateway to Italy he en¬ 
trusted the marks of Verona and Aquileia, in the northeast, to 
Henry of Bavaria. All this seems to flow naturally from Otto’s 
concept of his office of German king. Aquileia, Verona, even 
Lombardy, may be regarded as merely extensions, on the south¬ 
east and south, of the mark system. 

Otto Revives the Empire 

Otto’s next moves in Italy, however, were conceived in a 
different realm of thought. He seems to have regarded him¬ 
self as the heir of the Carolingian tradition. He seems to have 
felt it his duty to restore the empire of Charlemagne. This 
feeling was certainly shared by the German bishops and barons. 
There is evidence that Otto’s project of reviving the empire 


234 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


met with their hearty approval. We should remember that 
for mediaeval man the Golden Age was in the past. He idealized 
the past and dreamt of a time when the splendor and gran¬ 
deur of the Roman Empire might be recovered, believing that 
then the world was at its happiest. Upon the ancient concept 
of Roman unity had been engrafted that of Christian unity, 
with pope and emperor cooperating for the good of mankind. 
Otto I, at the head of the strongest of the feudal kingdoms, 
was in a position to realize the ambition of all Christian princes 
for centuries. Making his way southward to Rome, on his 
second visit to Italy, Otto was crowned emperor by Pope John 
XII, on February 2, 962, Adelaide being crowned empress at 
the same time. 

Otto the Great seems to have regarded himself as the successor 
of Charlemagne and of the Caesars as well. The inscriptions 
on his coins before 962 are Rex Francorum or Rex Francorum 
Orientalium; afterwards, Imperator Augustus. He established 
friendly relations with the eastern emperor, as an equal, and 
arranged a marriage between his son Otto and the Greek princess 
Theophano. He sought to make the imperial office hereditary 
in his own family by having his son crowned emperor during 
his (Otto Us) own lifetime. 

Like Charlemagne, too, Otto took it upon himself to “set 
in order the affairs of the church” which were in confusion. 
The popes, by tradition, were elected by the clergy and people 
of Rome. Actually the papal office had in this period become 
the prize of contending and selfish factions in the Eternal City. 
The popes followed each other in swift succession, not living 
out half their time. Between 896 and 903 there had been eight 
popes. There followed a period when the Holy See was con¬ 
trolled by the sons or lovers of two infamous sisters named Theo¬ 
dora and Marozia. Alberic, son of Marozia, made himself mas¬ 
ter of the city and his son became pope, taking the name of 
John XII. The life of this pope was a public scandal and the 
situation cried aloud for the intervention of some son of the 
church, disinterested, devoted, and powerful enough to rescue 
the papal office from its degradation. Such an one was Otto. 
For that very cause, in part^ he came to Rome in 962 to become 


GERMAN NATION; MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE 


235 


emperor. Secure in his new dignity and well versed, seemingly, 
in Carolingian and earlier precedents, Otto summoned a Coun¬ 
cil of the church at Rome, in 963. Here, after trial, John XII 
was deposed “for murder, sacrilege, and immoralityOne 
of Otto’s dependents was appointed pope, taking the name 
Leo VIII. The Romans were constrained to promise that they 
would not elect a pope, henceforth, without the consent of 
Otto or his son, and it was decreed that no pope should be 
consecrated until he had sworn allegiance to the emperor. It 
should be said that the turbulent Romans resented Otto’s au¬ 
thoritative ways and broke out in rebellion as often as Otto’s 
Saxon troops were withdrawn from the city. As Otto’s reduc¬ 
tion of the German clergy to feudal dependence threatened to 
destroy their spiritual leadership, so his enslavement of the 
papacy threatened the high destiny of the mediaeval church 
as the great civilizing agency of the middle ages. 

The Holy Roman Empire 

Though he assayed the role of Charlemagne, Otto was not 
the restorer of the Frankish empire. France was now outside 
the empire. Italy was never fully included in it despite Otto’s 
best efforts; Lombardy was quiet enough, but Rome was always 
threatening. Otto extended his authority east and south of the 
papal city by receiving the homage of the prince of Capua and 
Benevento, one Pandulf Iron Head, and investing him with the 
duchy of Spoleto. Thus Otto had established a strong southern 
mark for his Italian holdings. Southern Italy remained subject 
to the Eastern Empire, and Sicily was in the hands of the Sara¬ 
cens. Not only did Otto’s empire differ from Charlemagne’s 
in extent; it differed widely in character. Otto’s authority was 
feudal, not national; he was suzerain, not sovereign. Of course, 
the effect of the prestige of the imperial title in exalting the 
“sovereign” aspect of the German kingship must not be lost 
sight of. After all, however, the hard center of Otto’s power 
remained what it had been, that of the feudal kingship of Ger¬ 
many. 

We would do well to recognize that Otto created something 
new in European history, namely, “The Holy Roman Empire 


236 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


of the German Nation.” This entity, so full of importance for 
the future history of Germany, of Italy, and indeed of Europe, 
lived on for many centuries, coming finally to an end amid the 
upheavals of the Napoleonic era, in 1806. Charlemagne’s em¬ 
pire scarcely survived its founder, it will be remembered. Nar¬ 
rower in its limits, less carefully organized, Otto’s empire was 
actually much the more solid of the two because it was more 
firmly rooted in the social order of its day. 

Under Otto I the German nation remained the dominant 
factor in the Holy Roman Empire which he had founded. His 
son and successor, Otto II (973-983), was half Roman in his 
outlook. He sought to combine Germany and Italy into a com¬ 
pact whole. In this he had a measure of success, apparently, 
as is evidenced in a Council of his German and north Italian 
barons at Verona, where a joint Crusade against the Moham¬ 
medans was approved. It is interesting to note the opposition 
of the Venetian merchants to this project, an opposition arising 
from their already rich trade with the Mohammedans. This 
Crusade, preached by an emperor, just a century earlier than 
the Crusades preached by the popes, never was launched, for 
Otto II died the very year of the Council (983). He was only 
twenty-eight and had reigned but ten years. 

Otto III, “the Wonder of the World” 

Otto III was wholly Roman in his outlook. But three years 
old when his father died, the boy-king owed his throne to the 
loyalty of the German clergy, whom his grandfather had been 
at such pains to attach to the throne. From his mother, Theo- 
phano, the young prince learned of the despotic power which 
an emperor should have. From the clergy, who educated him, 
he drew his sense of the mystical character of his office. Taking 
up his office, the young Otto conceived the fantastic idea of 
moving the capital of the empire to Rome and making the 
Eternal City, in cooperation with the pope, the capital of a 
Kingdom of God on earth. He built himself a palace on the 
Aventine, the home of the early Caesars. There Otto secluded 
himself from the public like an Oriental despot. His court offi¬ 
cials assumed high-sounding Greek and Latin titles. Counselors 


GERMAN NATION; MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE 


237 


were called “logothetes ”, generals were known as comites im- 
perialis militix. The chamberlain was more or less concealed 
under the title protovestarius. Otto called himself “ servant 
of the Apostles ” ( Otto servus apostolorum et deo favente Roman - 
orum imperator Augustus), and “servant of Jesus Christ”. A 
college of seven officials known as judices palatii ordinarii was 
constituted to ordain (instead of crown) the emperor, who 
would succeed, of course, by hereditary right, and to elect the 
pope. 

For the bringing in of the Kingdom of God the cooperation 
of the pope was essential. In the second of the two popes whom 
he appointed this young “wonder of the world” found a man 
exactly suited to his plans. This was Gerbert of Aurillac, a 
Frenchman of humble birth, who had had the good fortune 
to learn mathematics and philosophy from the Moors in Spain. 
A man of brilliant intellectual gifts, Gerbert became the most 
learned man of his age and even achieved a reputation as a 
magician, such was his cleverness in mathematics and mechan¬ 
ics. Following a distinguished if stormy ecclesiastical career 
in France, Gerbert made the acquaintance of Otto and the two 
became close friends. Otto made Gerbert archbishop of Ra¬ 
venna, and in 999 appointed him pope. As pope Gerbert took 
the name of Sylvester II, recalling memories of the first Syl¬ 
vester, close friend and counselor of the emperor Constantine. 
These fantastic dreams of an idyllic age to be ushered in by a 
pope and an emperor invested with God-like power to advance 
mankind were cut short by the death of Otto III in 1002, at 
the age of twenty-two. Pope Sylvester followed him to the 
grave in 1004. 

Comment on the reign of Otto III is superfluous. He was 
a dreamer, a poet, with no right to a position of leadership in 
practical affairs. Nothing but harm could come to Germany 
from such a reign. The feudal barons became more independent, 
and the German clergy were alienated. “Otto III was the first 
of that long line of brilliant and attractive failures which it 
was the special mission of the mediaeval Empire to produce.” 

The famous visit of Otto III to the tomb of Charlemagne 
at Aix-la-Chapelle in the year 1000 is characteristic of the boy- 


238 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


emperor. As we get the story it is told by a chronicler of Lom¬ 
bardy writing fifty years later, but he says he had it on the 
testimony of an eyewitness. This witness says that they found 
the dead Charlemagne seated upright. “He was crowned with 
a golden crown, and held a sceptre in his hands, the same being 
covered with gloves, through which the nails had grown and 
pierced. And above him was a tabernacle compact of brass and 
marble exceedingly. Now when we were come in unto the tomb, 
we brake and made straightway an opening in it. And when 
we entered into it, we perceived a vehement savour. And 
so we did worship forthwith to him with bended thighs and 
knees; and straightway Otto the Emperor clad him with a white 
raiment, and pared his nails, and made good all that was lacking 
about him. But none of his members had corrupted and fallen 
away, except a little piece of the end of his nose, which he 
caused at once to be restored with gold; and he took from his 
mouth one tooth, and built the tabernacle again and departed.” 1 

Decline under Henry II 

Under Henry II (1002-1024), cousin and successor of 
Otto III, the German monarchy touched bottom. Henry was 
the last of the Saxon emperors, being a great-grandson, as was 
Otto III, of Henry the Fowler. The five emperors of the Saxon 
line cover just over a century (918-1024). We may say, with 
sufficient truth, that the German monarchy was founded by 
the first two Saxon kings, Henry I and Otto I, maintained 
by the third, and suffered a great decline under the fourth and 
fifth. Otto III had left no direct heir, so the German feudal 
barons seized the opportunity to revive the custom of election, 
making Henry their choice. He was duke of Bavaria and so 
had strong local support in that duchy. But he was not man 
enough to overawe his fellow barons, after the manner of 
Otto the Great, so the kingly office lost heavily in prestige. The 
barons resumed their turbulent ways, and private war was 
rife throughout the reign. 

The Saxon policy of relying on the German clergy was con- 

1 Chronicon Novaliciense, III, 32. Quoted in Cambridge Mediaeval His¬ 
tory , III, 213-214. 



































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GERMAN NATION; MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE 


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tinued by Henry II, but he seems to have misunderstood it. 
He favored the clergy rather than used them, increasing their 
endowments, fostering missionary work, and allowing the bish¬ 
ops and abbots greatly to increase their local authority. Henry’s 
attitude toward the church was submissive and deferential, 
not commanding. It is significant that the monastic chronicles 
of the time awarded him the title of “Henry the Saint.” On 
the frontiers Germany was again gravely threatened with in¬ 
vasion. A great Scandinavian “empire” had been built up in 
the north by the pagan Sweyn Forkbeard and his son Cnut. 
In 1016 Cnut added England to his other possessions. The 
East saw the rise of a great Slav power in Poland. King Bole¬ 
slav invaded the German marks in 1013, seizing Lausitz. Hun¬ 
gary lay quiet for the moment under her king, St. Stephen, who 
was Henry IPs brother-in-law. 

On the south, if we may account Rome an outpost of Ger¬ 
man authority, there was to be seen the renewal of Saracen 
forays, seriously threatening southern Italy. The Italian nobles 
in the north of Italy chose one of their own number as king 
instead of Henry II, and the city of Rome also repudiated the 
authority of the German king. Henry invaded Italy, sharing 
the obsession of the age, overthrew his rivals in the kingdom 
of Italy and at Rome, and was crowned emperor by an obliging 
pope. His stay in Italy was brief, and when he left all was much 
as it had been before. A significant development is now to be 
observed in Lombardy where the cities, plagued more and more 
by the private wars of the turbulent barons, began to organ¬ 
ize for their own defense. 

A New Dynasty 

But failure as Henry II was, he had at least recalled the Ger¬ 
man monarchy to a more truly national policy. So clearly 
was this policy envisaged by the next two emperors, and so 
shrewdly did they explore it and implement it, that the Ger¬ 
man monarchy once more assumed the leadership in the Ger¬ 
man state, and by the middle of the eleventh century Germany 
was “almost a nation”. 

Conrad II (1024-1039) and his son Henry III (1039-1056) 


240 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


were dukes of Franconia. They founded a new dynasty of Ger¬ 
man kings which, like the Saxon line before it, lasted a century 
(1024-1125). Henry II had left no heir, so at his death the 
choice of the feudal barons fell upon Conrad. He proved to 
be a man of great practical ability, and though he felt it neces¬ 
sary to carry on the tradition and go to Rome for the imperial 
crown, he seems to have been determined not to allow Italian 
problems to interfere with his German policy. In Germany 
Conrad developed an entirely new policy for the monarchy, 
namely, that of allying the crown with the lesser nobles, the 
vassals of the great dukes. For example, Conrad strove to make 
the lesser fiefs hereditary. It will be recognized that, sound as 
this policy might seem to Conrad, it would give rise to an ex¬ 
tension of feudal disintegration; it would forward “particular¬ 
ism”, which was to become the curse of Germany in the later 
middle ages and in early modern times. Conrad abandoned 
the Saxon policy of alliance with the clergy. He began to build 
up a new class of royal officials, independent of the clergy and 
devoted to the crown. Conrad callously sold ecclesiastical 
offices to the highest bidder, taking a very material view of the 
church. No appellation of “the Saint” or “the Pious” attaches 
to his name. At his death he transmitted his authority to his 
son Henry, already crowned king in his father’s lifetime, and 
admirably trained for the duties of the office. 

Revival of the Empire under Henry III 

Henry III found the dukes quiet and the clergy loyal. He 
made royal progresses throughout his kingdom and found it 
possible to hold general assemblies of the feudal barons of the 
whole kingdom. Strong at home, the German monarchy under 
Henry III expanded to the widest boundaries it had ever known. 
Conrad II had married the heiress of the kingdom of Arles, or 
Lower Burgundy. This, it will be remembered, was one of the 
larger fragments of that Middle Kingdom assigned to Lothair, 
eldest son of Louis the Pious, in the Treaty of Verdun, in 843. 
In speech and culture it was Romance, not Teutonic, and it 
included all the land between the Rhone, on the west, and the 
Italian Alps; and it stretched from the Mediterranean north- 



GERMAN NATION; MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE 


241 


ward to include the modern Swiss cantons of French speech. 
In 1032 king Rudolf of Arles died and his kingdom passed to 
Conrad II of Germany. Thus the German empire was made 
less German, and the growth of France was delayed. 

Furthermore, German authority was once more asserted on 
the frontier, first by Conrad and then still more successfully 
by Henry III. Conrad recovered Lausitz. Henry wrested Bo¬ 
hemia from Poland and compelled the Bohemian king to be¬ 
come his vassal. Poland itself recognized Henry’s suzerainty. 
Hungary defied Conrad, but Henry, on his third try, deposed 
the Hungarian king, leader of a pagan reaction, and set up 
another who became Henry’s vassal (1045). Turning to Italy, 
Henry III crossed the Alps (1046), was received quietly by the 
Italian feudatories, and entered Rome. Crowned emperor, 
Henry consolidated his position in Rome and was named heredi¬ 
tary Patrician, with the right to nominate the pope. The new 
emperor made full use of this right by naming five popes in suc¬ 
cession, all German. “In Rome no German sovereign had ever 
been so absolute.” (Bryce.) Master of two-thirds of Charle¬ 
magne’s empire, with a “row of vassal kingdoms ” to the east, 
the German Empire had reached, at Henry Ill’s death in 1056, 
the “meridian of its power ”. 

For Further Reading 

Cambridge Mediaeval History, III, chaps. 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 
J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 
chap.11 

James Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire 
J. W. Thompson, Feudal Germany 
T. F. Tout, The Empire and the Papacy 
H. A. L. Fisher, The Mediaeval Empire 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 


ORIGIN AND EARLY GROWTH OF THE FRENCH 
NATION 

France a Geographical Expression 

France under Hugh Capet was so little the France of to-day 
as to be barely recognizable. In the first place, the Francia 
Occidentalis of that time included Belgium, on the north, and 
the Spanish March, on the south. On the other hand, the 
valleys of the Meuse and the upper Moselle lay outside its 
boundaries, as did the valley of the Rhone. Thus the French 
“ homeland ” had not been clearly marked out, and to define it 
further became one of the major problems of French history. 
A far greater problem, however, arose out of the great vari¬ 
ety of racial stocks and cultural inheritances included in the 
“France” of that day. So great was this variety that it has 
been well said that the France of the early Capetians was only 
a “geographical expression.” 

The racial stock of France included Franks, Normans, Roman 
provincials, Celts, Basques, Goths, Provencals, and others. 
All these differed among themselves in language, in customs, 
and in laws, like the Gauls of Caesar’s time. Politically speak¬ 
ing, Francia Occidentalis was made up of Austrasia, which 
included Lorraine and (upper) Burgundy; Neustria, which 
included the duchy of France, Champagne, Anjou, and Nor¬ 
mandy; and of Brittany and the duchy of Aquitaine. Or, to 
adopt a cultural classification, more fundamental and longer 
lived, France was two countries, north and south, with the 
Loire, roughly, separating the one from the other. The north 
is climatically akin to England and Germany, with a “beer and 
butter” economy. The German element was strong there, 
evincing itself in a stolid and phlegmatic temperament. The 
south is climatically akin to Italy and Spain, with the Roman 

242 


ORIGIN OF THE FRENCH NATION 


243 


element strong. The inhabitants practice an “oil and wine” 
economy, in common with the other Mediterranean countries. 
In temperament the people are vivacious and mercurial, lack¬ 
ing the stanch, soldier-like qualities of the northerners. If one 
were to put the cultural history of France in a phrase it would 
be, “the conquest of the south by the north”. French speech 
of to-day is the French of the north; that of the south has been 
blotted out. 


Weakness of the Feudal Kingship 

Owing in part to the local divisions just observed, feudalism 
had reached a stage of development in France, by the tenth 
century, beyond that attained in any other part of Europe. 
Every function and attribute of government, including defense, 
justice, and finance, had fallen into the hands of the local feuda¬ 
tories. Hugh Capet may have received some of the feudal 
dues and escheats which were owed him; but he certainly was 
not able to collect the military service to which the magnates 
were bound. For the defense of the kingdom the king was com¬ 
pelled to rely upon the resources of his own fief. This fact will 
not only reveal the slight dimensions to which the royal office had 
been reduced, but it will also explain why the Carolingians had 
lost the crown to the Capetians. The former, it will be remem¬ 
bered, had failed to carve out a large private fief of their own 
in France in the days when feudal disintegration was proceed¬ 
ing apace. The Carolingians had failed to root themselves in 
the soil, as their magnates were so busily doing. The Cape¬ 
tians, on the other hand, had been conspicuously successful in 
carving out a fief for themselves as dukes of France. They had 
made themselves further conspicuous in the wars against the 
Northmen. The voice of the church, expressed through its leader 
in France, the archbishop of Rheims, had been decisive in the 
Capetian favor as we have seen, and Hugh Capet became the 
founder of a new dynasty. 

We should guard ourselves against the facile assumption 
that this new dynasty was “French” and that the old dynasty 
was “German”. That would be solving our problem before we 
get to it, for there was no “France” or “Germany” in that day, 


244 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


in any of the modern senses of those words. Hugh Capet was 
just as German, and just as little French, as Louis V whom he 
succeeded. Both spoke the same language. Hugh himself was 
the son of a sister of the Saxon Otto the Great, whose claim to 
be the successor of the Carolingian emperors he resented and 
denied. Hugh’s policy as king was not different from that of 
the western Carolingians. 

The County of Flanders 

To understand the position of the new Capetian monarchy 
more fully we should turn to the great feudal principalities, 
some of which were larger and richer in resources than the royal 
domain itself. Farthest north was the county of Flanders, 
then owing allegiance to the French crown, for the Scheldt 
was at that time the boundary between France and Germany. 
Here were two racial stocks, the Flemings, of German blood 
and speech, and the Walloons who, though they probably 
differed from the Flemings but little in racial descent, were 
of Romance speech. Language is a bone of contention between 
the two peoples to this day. The fertile open plains of Flanders, 
sloping down to the sea, were early the scene of an active town 
life in which industry and commerce flourished. The textile 
industry became very important in these towns and led the 
counts of Flanders to seek commercial contacts abroad, espe¬ 
cially in England. Thus the foundation was laid for a long strug¬ 
gle between the counts and their suzerain, the king of France, 
which led at last to the loss of Flanders. 

The Duchy of Normandy 

Turning southward we come to the duchy of Normandy, in 
the lower valley of the Seine. Settled here by treaty, the North¬ 
men quickly exhibited their marvelous power of assimilation. 
Pagan before the settlement, they became zealous Christians, 
building churches, founding monasteries, supporting reforms, 
going on pilgrimages, and leading Crusades. Scandinavian in 
speech, they learned French, the French of the north, carrying 
it with them to England, to southern Italy and Sicily, and to 
the Near East. The widespread use of this langue d’oeil in- 


ORIGIN OF THE FRENCH NATION 


245 


creased its prestige and this fact helps to account for its ulti¬ 
mate triumph over the langue d’oc, which remained local, being 
confined to the south of France. The organizing qualities of 
the Northmen are to be seen in Normandy, also. The Norman 
dukes were intelligent and efficient rulers and built up a strongly 
centralized government in the duchy. To the enlightenment 
of the dukes, coupled with the taste for trade which all North¬ 
men showed, may be attributed the early disappearance of serf¬ 
dom in Normandy and the appearance of a free peasantry. The 
Normandy of the twelfth century has been declared to be “the 
most advanced and self-sufficient country in Europe.” 1 The 
duke of Normandy was for a long time a bigger man than the 
king of France to whom he owed allegiance. Indeed, the outside 
interests of the dukes were with Scandinavia and, after 1066, 
with England, rather than with France. 

The Isle-de-France 

It is time we noticed the private fief of the Capetians them¬ 
selves. We have already seen the earlier stages of its growth. 
Under Hugh Capet his lands formed a compact block of terri¬ 
tory extending from the Somme southward to the Loire, and 
from Normandy and Anjou eastward to Champagne. Included 
in this “duchy of France ” were the counties of Picardy, Blois, 
Perche, Touraine, and Maine, and the important cities of Paris 
and Orleans. A part of the Capetian strength lay in the fact 
that as dukes they were titular abbots of several of the rich ab¬ 
beys in the royal domain, as we have seen. The appellation 
“Capet ” is probably derived from the cape worn by Hugh as 
abbot of St. Martin’s of Tours. 

Well watered by the Seine, Oise, and Marne, the soil of the 
duchy was very fertile, producing abundantly both wheat and 
wine. These same rivers became highways of water-borne com¬ 
merce in due time. The population of the duchy was homogene¬ 
ous in racial stock and in culture, the most homogeneous to be 
found in any of the French fiefs. Thus the Capetian dukes could 
proceed with their work of consolidation of the duchy upon a 
solid foundation of linguistic and cultural affinity and of eco- 

1 Powicke. Quoted by Thompson, op. cit., p. 478. 


246 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


nomic prosperity. “Politically, ecclesiastically, culturally the 
Isle-de-France was the soundest and most vigorous region of 
that broken, divided, sprawling agglomeration of provinces 
whose vague relation together connoted the ‘ realm ’ of France 
in the tenth century.” 1 Growing slowly by accretion, through 
the centuries the “Isle” became at length the “realm”. The 
political history of France is “the conquest of the kingdom by 
its kings.” 

Brittany 

Brittany had been pretty fully Romanized as a part of Gaul, 
but had suffered a “relapse”. During the Saxon invasion of 
Roman Britain a great many of the native British fled overseas 
to Brittany. A glance at the map will make it clear that the 
Breton peninsula offered the readiest refuge to these Christian 
Celts fleeing from the pagan Saxons. The Celtic element was 
so strengthened that Brittany became almost completely Celtic. 
So little had this outlying county in common with the other 
feudal provinces of France that it remained provincial in the 
highest degree, as it still does. It was almost the last bit of 
France to become French. 

The South of France 

South of the Loire were three great fiefs, Aquitaine, Gascony, 
and Toulouse. Aquitaine, the largest of the fiefs of France, lay 
between the Loire and the Garonne and stretched right across 
the country from the Atlantic Ocean to Burgundy. Among its 
counties were Poitou, Berry, Saintonge, Auvergne, and Peri- 
gord. South of the Garonne, in the southwest corner of France, 
was Gascony, whose name is derived from that mysterious race 
called the Basques, its principal racial stock. East of Gascony 
was Toulouse, with a population fundamentally Roman in 
stock but with some admixture of West Gothic blood, for it will 
be remembered that the city of Toulouse had been for many 
generations the capital of the West Gothic kingdom. These 
three fiefs of the south of France, Aquitaine, Gascony, and 
Toulouse, were almost as “foreign” to the France north of the 

1 Thompson, oj). cit., p-v 304. 


ORIGIN OF THE FRENCH NATION 


247 


Loire as Spain is to-day, in speech as well as in culture. Indeed, 
the fortunes of Aquitaine and Gascony were linked with Eng¬ 
land rather than with France until the very close of the middle 
ages. 

The total population of the French kingdom in the tenth 
century has been estimated at between eight and nine millions. 
With agricultural methods still primitive and with industry 
and trade in their barest beginnings, a population of this magni¬ 
tude argues a fertile country, with unusually good resources 
in soil and forest. England’s population in the tenth century did 
not exceed 1,500,000. Throughout the middle ages, and well 
into modern times, France was the richest and most populous 
country of Europe, a self-sufficient economic unit. The French 
were truly well favored in their homeland. 

Our hasty survey of some of the leading fiefs of France will 
make it clear how little unity there was in so great variety. 
Of national consciousness, in the tenth century, there was as¬ 
suredly not a trace. The sole bond of union was the crown, 
to which the feudal magnates owed allegiance and in the elec¬ 
tion to which they shared. It may well be asked, why was the 
crown retained? For one thing, the feudal system logically 
called for a king as suzerain. Again, the old Carolingian tradition 
was still alive. The Capetians were sedulous in fostering this 
tradition, referring to the sovereigns of that house as “our 
predecessors”, using forms and seals like those formerly in use, 
and basing their legislation upon the Carolingian capitularies. 

The Capetian Monarchy 

The first four Capetian kings carry us through the eleventh 
century. (Hugh Capet, 987-996; Robert the Pious, 996—1031; 
Henry I, 1031-1060; Philip I, 1060-1108.) The utmost that 
can be said of these four monarchs is that they kept the mon¬ 
archy alive and that they ensured its continuance in their 
own family. When one compares this record with the great 
developments in contemporary Germany it seems a very modest 
achievement. Hugh Capet began with a “family” policy very 
like that of Otto I in Germany half a century earlier. Hugh’s 
brother was duke of Burgundy, a brother-in-law was duke of 


248 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Normandy, and Hugh’s wife was the daughter of the duke of 
Aquitaine. But this policy, if policy it were, got Hugh nowhere. 
The feudal magnates were much too strong; provincial feeling 
was far too highly developed. “Marriage of fiefs” continued, 
but it contributed little to the growth of France. More impor¬ 
tant for the monarchy was the steady support of the church. 
The clergy favored centralizing policies for two reasons. First, 
the growth of a central authority would diminish feudal anarchy 
and thus promote security for all men. Secondly, union under 
the monarchy would make the organisation of the church easier 
to maintain than would be the case in a France divided up 
among half a dozen independent states. The prince-bishops 
therefore threw their influence on the side of the crown. “Every 
great church fief was a center of royal influence,” says Tout. 

We need not enter upon a detailed history of France under 
the first four Capetians. The monarchy, if it did not win spec¬ 
tacular victories, suffered no decisive defeats. After the duke 
of Normandy became king of England in 1066 it might well 
seem that the French monarchy’s hold on life was a precarious 
one. The Norman duke commanded resources far greater than 
those of his king. The French king’s relations with this royal 
duke became and long remained his principal preoccupation. 
Fortunately the Norman dukes, in general, were interested in 
the kingdom of England rather than in the duchy of Normandy, 
and drew away from French politics in some degree. Much 
later, when national consciousness began to dawn in France, 
the French kings were able to focus this sentiment upon the 
anomaly of an English king clinging to French fiefs. Without 
question, however, the greatest triumph of the early Capetians 
was their good fortune in preserving an unbroken succession 
from father to son, the son being crowned, always, during the 
lifetime of his father. Capetian kings thus became a habit. 
Later Capetians kept up the good work, the effect of which 
was cumulative. For well over three hundred years, (987-1316), 
the succession from father to son was maintained unbroken. 

Here, in 1108, we may lay aside for a time our study of the 
growth of France. She was broken and divided, with not a 
shred of national feeling, a mere confederation of “nations”, 


ORIGIN OF THE FRENCH NATION 


249 


Flemish, Norman, Breton, Gascon. Yet a tradition of unity- 
had been maintained and, by the sheer force of traditional 
continuity through successive generations, increased. The out¬ 
look for the French monarchy at the beginning of the twelfth 
century was bleak. But the Capetian kings had been building 
better than they knew. Ere another century elapsed France had 
become the foremost state in Europe. 

For Further Reading 

J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 
chap. 12 

Cambridge Mediaeval History , III, chaps. 4 and 5 

C. H. Haskins, The Normans in European History, chap. 5 

A. Tilley, Mediaeval France, chaps. 1 and 2 

J. Evans, Life in Mediaeval France 

G. Masson, The Story of Mediaeval France 

A. Lavisse, Histoire de France, vol. II 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

ORIGIN AND EARLY GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH 
NATION 

The British Isles 

In studying the major movements of European history, thus 
far, we have frequently had occasion to glance at the British 
Isles. Up to this point, however, there has been little or noth¬ 
ing that is distinctive in their history. They shared in the evolu¬ 
tion of Europe without contributing to it. As English-speaking 
people, however, our own inheritance from the British Isles 
has been so considerable as to make a somewhat extended dis¬ 
cussion of their early history desirable. 

There are about five hundred islands in the group we call 
the British Isles. A glance at a physical map of Europe will 
reveal them as detached fragments of the mainland, as indeed 
they are. Through geologic ages the sea has been encroaching 
on the land, first cutting off Ireland and then Great Britain 
from the Continent. This process is still going on. Indeed, the 
sea is eating away the land in these parts at about the same 
rate as it has always done. Along the east coast of England 
whole villages have been swallowed up since the Norman Con¬ 
quest. As a “homeland” the British Isles are rich in natural re¬ 
sources. The climate is typically oceanic; that is, there is a 
remarkably even temperature summer and winter. Despite 
their northerly position, being in the latitude of Labrador, the 
climate of the British Isles is mild. This is due to the prevailing 
winds which blow to the northeast over the Atlantic from the 
Gulf district of North America. On the whole the British Isles 
are better fitted for pasture than for agriculture, however, and 
this undoubtedly accounts for their scant population until 
well into modern times. Out on the edge of the known world, 
with her back to the dark Atlantic but warming her hands at 
civilization’s fires, England remained, until the beginning of 
modern times, small, backward, and poor. 

250 


ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NATION 


251 


The racial stock of the British Isles came from the Continent, 
as did all their flora and fauna. However non-European Eng¬ 
land may assume to be, or really be, to-day, she was European 
in every aspect of her life and culture from remote antiquity, 
and remained so well through the middle ages. Wave after 
wave of invasion and migration from the Continent inundated 
the British Isles. The chalk cliffs of southeastern England may 
be easily discerned from the mainland on a clear day. These 
successive waves of invasion may be traced as far back as the 
Early Stone Age at least. Landing on the southeastern coast 
of Britain the newcomers would kill off, subject, or drive out 
the peoples whom they found. The oldest stocks, therefore, 
are to be found to-day in the mountains to the north and west 
and in remoter regions like Cornwall, Scotland (the Highlands), 
and Ireland. 

The Roman Occupation 

When Britain was first clearly discernible in the pages of 
history the dominant people in the island were the Celts. 
Tribes of Celts had been moving westward across Europe since 
the seventh century b.c. One group settled in the Po valley, 
whence their forays threatened Rome. Another group became 
an important element in the population of Gaul. Still another 
group crossed the Channel to Britain. Killing, driving out, or 
subjecting the peoples they found already on the soil, the tall, 
fair-haired Celts settled down as a conquering aristocracy. The 
small, dark-haired “pre-Celts”, so numerous to-day in Cornwall, 
Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, represent, therefore, the older 
racial stock of the islands. The civilization brought in by the 
Celts was superior to that which they found. They used iron 
instead of bronze. Herds of pigs were their principal source of 
food but they cultivated cereals also. The Celts discovered that 
wheat flourishes best in the south and oats in the north, and the 
modern Englishman and Scot knows that this still holds true. 
Linguistically we may distinguish two divisions among the 
conquering Celts—first, the Gaels, now found in Ireland and 
Scotland, and secondly, the Brythons, now found in Wales but 
formerly in England also. These latter were in touch with the 


252 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Belgx of Caesar’s day, across the Channel. They even acknowl¬ 
edged “kings” of the Belgx as their sovereigns, and sent forces 
to aid their cousins in Gaul in their battles with Caesar. 

This connection between the Celts of Britain and the Celts 
of Gaul led to Caesar’s invasion of Britain in 55 b.c. Caesar 
came and saw, but stayed not to conquer. There was little to 
be had in Britain that would embellish a Roman “triumph” 
or even contribute to Caesar’s political fortunes. Vercingetorix 
again went on the warpath in Gaul, and then civil war broke 
out in Rome, recalling Caesar to Italy. For a century thereafter 
further expansion abroad had to wait upon Rome’s internal 
reorganisation, and Britain continued to live beyond the pale. 

In 43 a.d. the emperor Claudius determined upon the con¬ 
quest of Britain and three legions were dispatched thither for 
the purpose. The conquest did not proye to be either easy or 
swift; it cost the Romans well-nigh forty years of hard fighting. 
One by one, however, the centers of resistance were broken up 
and Britain received the usual organisation of a Roman prov¬ 
ince, with a governor who exercised both civil and military 
power. Of the Roman governors of Britain Julius Agricola, 
78-85 a.d., is deservedly the most famous. He placed his mili¬ 
tary outposts with great skill, and was a merciful and just 
ruler. Tacitus, the great Roman historian, was his son-in-law, 
and his well known work, Agricola , is doubtless based upon 
word-of-mouth information from Agricola himself. The Romans 
never attempted to penetrate the interior of Wales or the High¬ 
lands of Scotland. 

Within the limits of the occupied territory, substantially 
those of modern England, Rome proceeded to introduce a civi¬ 
lization, after her famous fashion. Britain became a land of 
towns and cities. The sites of more than one hundred and fifty 
Roman towns are known to-day. Many of them grew out of 
military camps, as the familiar endings cester, caster , and Chester 
signify. Industries flourished in the towns and an active com¬ 
merce was carried on. The towns were linked together by splen¬ 
did military roads. Rural areas were organized according to 
the villa system, with large agricultural estates tilled by gangs 
of slaves or groups of coloni. Latin became a universal language, 


ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NATION 


253 


and Christianity was introduced. In short, Britain was thor¬ 
oughly Romanized, almost as thoroughly as was Gaul. The 
Roman occupation of Britain, nearly four centuries long, lacks 
a century of the length of the Roman occupation of Gaul, yet 
four centuries is a considerable span. It is but little more than 
four hundred years since Columbus discovered America; yet 
what an astonishing transformation has taken place in the 
American scene during that period of time! 

It is essential that we should note well the duration of the 
Roman occupation of Britain and emphasize the degree of Ro- 
manization. Otherwise we shall miss the significance of what 
has been called “the greatest fact in the early history of Eng¬ 
land.” We may state that fact in the language of the great 
English authority, Haverfield. “From the Romans who once 
ruled Britain,” he says, “we Britons have inherited practically 
nothing.” Gaul was Romanized, and Gaul to-day is a Roman 
country, speaking a Romance language. England to-day is 
Roman neither in culture nor in speech. An impress that proved 
indelible in Gaul was erased in Britain. What was the cause of 
such a cataclysmic effect? The answer is, the Anglo-Saxon in¬ 
vasions. 


The Anglo-Saxon Invasions 

Roving bands of Angles, Saxons, Frisians, and Jutes made 
frequent forays into Roman Britain, probably before the end of 
the fourth century. They came from the coasts of Holland, 
Germany, and Denmark, and they were actuated by motives 
similar to those which impelled the German invaders to ad¬ 
vance into Roman territory all along the Rhine-Danube line 
in the period of the Great Invasions. We know little of the story 
of the invasions of Britain, and that little we have already noted 
in the chapter on “ The Invasions.” Succeeding a phase of 
plundering raids there must have been a long period of popular 
migration, during which groups of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes 
settled on the soil of Britain in petty kingdoms. By 600 a.d. 
a fringe of such kingdoms stretched along the east coast of 
Britain from the Firth of Forth southward to the Straits of 
Dover and then westward to Cornwall. North of the Humber 


254 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


river was a settlement of Angles known as Northumbria. This 
kingdom extended far northward into Scotland to include what 
is now known as Lothian. South of Northumbria, occupying 
the coast between the Humber and the Wash and extending 
into the interior, was another settlement of Angles, known as 
the kingdom of the Mercians. 

Continuing down the coast we come next to the East Angles, 
divided into North Folk and South Folk. Still further south 
were the East Saxons, their southern boundary being the 
Thames. Upstream from them, occupying the site of London 
and its environs, were the Middle Saxons. The extreme south¬ 
east corner of the island was occupied by Jutes. They called 
themselves “Kentishmen”, or dwellers in “Caint”, an old 
Celtic name for this region. Rounding the corner to the west 
we find a settlement of South Saxons, lying between Kent and 
Southampton Water. The Isle of Wight and the coast just 
to the north was occupied by another little settlement of Jutes. 
Then came the West Saxons, out on the frontier of Anglo- 
Saxon settlement, with plenty of hard fighting against the 
Roman Celts of the southwest to occupy them. 

The languages spoken by these settlers were dialects of 
Low German, other dialects of which included Dutch and Flem¬ 
ish. Soon after the formation of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms 
scholars among them who were familiar with written Latin 
began to write down their own language, the words being 
spelled just as they sounded. This began first among the Angles 
of Northumbria. Hence the new written language was known 
as English, and the land as a whole was called England. It 
is remarkable that this written language, of which the earliest 
surviving specimens date from c. 700 a.d., has almost no 
Celtic or Latin words in it,—an eloquent testimony to the 
effectiveness of the invaders’ destructive efforts. 

In their mode of life the incoming Angles and Saxons were in 
complete contrast with the Romanized Britons whom they 
dispossessed. Industries passed out of existence and commerce 
died out. Roads, being unused, were neglected and fell into 
disrepair. Most remarkable of all, perhaps, was the complete 
disappearance of city life. The Angles and Saxons had neither 


ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NATION 


255 


the will nor the skill to carry on city life. They built themselves 
log cabins in little clusters on the banks of streams. The cities, 
stripped of everything portable and then abandoned, slowly 
weathered away. For centuries the crumbling walls and ivy- 
clad towers of these ruins formed a familiar feature of the Eng¬ 
lish landscape, just as the ruined abbeys do to-day. 

Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity 

From Christian civilization to pagan barbarism, in a word, 
was the effect of the Anglo-Saxon invasions of the British Isles. 
This relapse had lasted for two centuries when Christian mis¬ 
sionaries reintroduced civilization. The landing of St. Augustine 
in Kent, in 597 a.d., is a major event in English history. Au¬ 
gustine, commissioned by the pope as “archbishop of the Eng¬ 
lish^, established himself at the Kentish capital, Canterbury. 
Old Roman churches were repaired and new ones built, and 
the population thereabouts was introduced to the teachings, 
the form and ceremonies, and the superior moral code of the 
Christian faith. 

Meanwhile Christianity was entering the north of England, 
and by another road. Ireland, alone of western European lands, 
had never been included in the Roman Empire. Irish civiliza¬ 
tion had grown up relatively uninfluenced by external forces, 
therefore. The Irish had not advanced very far in agriculture 
and their chief wealth was cattle. The pasture lands were 
owned and used in common by all the members of a clan. Cer¬ 
tain industrial arts like basket-making, metal-work, and leather- 
work exhibited the remarkable skill of the Irish craftsmen. Of 
more importance to western civilization, however, were the 
Irish folklore, poetry, and fairy tales, all of which were highly 
imaginative and replete with extravagant fancy; they are now 
a part of the warp and woof of European literature. 

Welsh Christians, fleeing from Roman Britain after the fall 
of Rome, had introduced Christianity into Ireland, the most 
famous of the missionaries being St. Patrick. Other Roman pro¬ 
vincials fled to Ireland from Gaul. It is thought that a great 
many such fugitives went to Ireland as the result of the invasion 
of Gaul by the Vandals, in 406 a.d. Among them, it is thought, 


256 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


were scholars learned in the culture of Rome and Greece. They 
took to Ireland with them scholastic and literary standards 
of the best period, for at that time learning had not yet begun 
to decline in Gaul. Ireland proved to be a secure refuge. Chris¬ 
tian scholarship flourished there. At the time of Augustine’s 
landing in England Irish learning was the best in the western 
world, her schools surpassing those of Rome itself. The Celtic 
church, as the Christian church in Ireland is called, was re¬ 
markable for its missionary enthusiasm. Irish monks and 
priests were very venturesome. Their first enterprise was a 
mission to Scotland, where St. Columba founded the famous 
monastery of Iona. Shortly after Augustine’s coming mission¬ 
aries were sent southward from this center to preach to the 
pagan Angles of Northumbria. 

Thus there were two channels of missionary activity in Eng¬ 
land, one from Rome and one from Ireland. Each made rapid 
progress, the pagan religion of the Angles and Saxons offering 
little resistance. There is no record of a single missionary being 
killed during the whole course of the conversion. The Anglo- 
Saxons surrendered to the Christian religion almost en masse 
within half a century of Augustine’s arrival. The problem of 
the two rival churches remained. Certain peculiarities had de¬ 
veloped in the Celtic church during the centuries when it was 
cut off from Rome. Easter was figured in differing ways, in the 
two churches; the forms observed in baptism were not the same, 
and the tonsure differed in shape. More important is the fact 
that the Celtic church was not an organic part of the Roman 
papacy, the greatest civilizing agency of the middle ages. At a 
Synod of churchmen and others summoned by the king of 
Northumbria at Whitby, in 664 a.d., the royal vote was cast for 
the Roman church, and ecclesiastical unity was thus achieved. 

The Kingdom of England 

The ecclesiastical unity of England was followed by political 
unity, though the latter came more slowly. Of the seven and 
more original Anglo-Saxon kingdoms three stood out as leaders, 
in the course of time,—Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. 
Each in turn claimed supremacy over the others, though 





















































































































































































































258 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


without complete acknowledgment. Northumbrian supremacy 
came first, falling in the seventh century. The authority of 
Northumbria’s great king Edwin extended far into Scotland, 
as the name of the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, suggests. It 
was the turn of Mercia next, her period of supremacy falling 
in the eighth century. Her capital, Lichfield, was for a time 
the ecclesiastical capital of England as the seat of an “arch¬ 
bishop of Lichfield.” Lastly and most completely of all came 
the supremacy of Wessex. This began in the ninth century. 
King Egbert of Wessex is usually accorded the distinction of 
being the first to be called “king of England ”, in the year 830 
a.d. The royal House of Wessex became, thus, the royal house 
of England, whose latest representative is King George V. 

Of course the student will not make the easy assumption that 
the establishment of an overlordship in England by the House 
of Wessex in 830 was the creation of a nation. He will recall 
how far from nationhood was Germany on the accession of 
Henry the Fowler, and France on the accession of Hugh Capet. 
England under Egbert was still farther from real nationhood. 
There was no national feeling at all. Several of the formerly 
independent Anglo-Saxon kings continued to maintain them¬ 
selves for a time in practically independent fashion. 

King Alfred and the Danes 

Nor was England’s progress toward nationhood rapid under 
King Egbert and his immediate successors. Indeed, Anglo- 
Saxon culture itself was now threatened with extinction at the 
hands of the Northmen. The doings of the Northmen in Europe, 
—their raids, their settlements, their political conquests,—have 
already been set forth. It was inevitable that Anglo-Saxon 
England should suffer more at the hands of these pagan ma¬ 
rauders than any other part of the civilized world of the West. 
England lay close to Scandinavia. She was easily accessible 
from the sea and, being well watered, her streams gave the 
Norse boats ready access to her inward parts. Furthermore, 
England was capable of only a feeble resistance, as compared 
to the continent of Europe, for her population was sparse and 
her political development slight. 


ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NATION 


259 


Having in mind the part played by the Northmen in Euro¬ 
pean history, we may note their influence on the course of Eng¬ 
lish history. First, we may distinguish, in England as in Europe, 
a period of plundering raids. This began in 787 a.d., the year 
of the first recorded attack of Northmen on the British Isles, 
and extended to 885, the year of the Treaty of Wedmore. To¬ 
ward the end of this period Anglo-Saxon England was well- 
nigh prostrate, so terrific had been her punishment and so long 
drawn out. North of the Thames civilization was practically 
at an end. The monastic schools there, once famous, had not 
only declined; they had ceased to exist. It is asserted that not a 
priest north of the Thames could read or write. 

South of the Thames the situation was fast becoming des¬ 
perate. A great Danish “army” had fastened itself upon the 
western shires of Wessex when a young prince came to the throne 
of Wessex, and therefore of England, in 870. He quickly found 
that his only safety lay in flight and concealment in the marshes 
of the interior. Yet somehow Alfred kept heart, and he even 
managed to instill some of his own courage into his scattered 
followers. Gathering his forces, King Alfred ventured forth 
from the friendly marshes and boldly sought out the invading 
army. In a sharp and decisive engagement he beat the Danes 
at Ethandune. The Danish leader, Guthrum, agreed to with¬ 
draw from Wessex, gave hostages, and accepted Christianity. 
This was in 878, and the Anglo-Saxon king followed up his first 
victory by several others. A few years later Alfred made a de¬ 
cision which marks him as a statesman of high rank. This was 
embodied in the famous Treaty of Wedmore, by which Alfred 
abandoned half his kingdom in order to make sure of the re¬ 
mainder. The Danish leader agreed to stay out of Wessex and 
to confine his activities, henceforth, to the north and east of a 
line along the Thames as far as Wallingford, and thence to 
Chester. The Danish “army ” proceeded to settle in this north¬ 
eastern section of Anglo-Saxon England. Popular migration 
on a large scale then set in from Scandinavia and continued for 
at least a century. 

But Alfred’s title, “the Great”, which students of his life 
and times have awarded him, does not rest merely upon a bril- 


260 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


liant victory followed by a timely and prudent treaty. It 
rests also upon the energy and resourcefulness with which the 
tireless monarch fortified what he had won. All along the new 
Danish frontier Alfred proceeded to erect strongholds. They 
were crude affairs, to be sure, merely mounds of earth sur¬ 
mounted by wooden citadels or blockhouses and surrounded 
by ditches. To garrison these strongholds, and also to provide 
an army in the field, Alfred hit upon the scheme of dividing 
the farmer-warriors of each village into three groups, one to 
man the strongholds, one to serve in the field, and the third to 
carry on the necessary farm work of the village. It will be re¬ 
called that the Danes had always relied upon digging themselves 
in, when surrounded, and waiting until the enraged peasantry 
in arms melted away to their farms. 

Still another device for the defense of the West Saxon realm 
emanated from the brain of the versatile king. He built a fleet 
of boats, copied from the Danish boats, in which to go out to 
meet the enemy and make a sea fight of it. Alfred’s boats were 
built so that they would ride high in the water, thus enabling 
the Saxon fighters to rain blows upon their enemies from above. 
Over-enthusiastic admirers of this great king have found a war¬ 
rant, here, for calling Alfred the founder of the English navy! 

Having rescued a part, at least, of his inheritance, and having 
fortified it, Alfred proceeded to restore it. The long wars with 
the Danes had brought demoralization and the breakdown of 
law and order. Alfred set about to establish security for life 
and property, reissuing the old laws and supplementing them 
where necessary. Faced with the problem of an ignorant and 
uneducated priesthood, the source of all moral leadership and 
even of civilization in those days, the indefatigable king made 
himself the teacher of his people. He learned Latin, selected 
the works which seemed to him most suitable, and translated 
them into the language of the people, adding his own comments. 
Alfred thus became an important figure in the history of English 
literature. He established a school at his court for the young 
sons of nobles, drawing his staff of instruction from the scholars 
of Wales, France, and Germany. He also founded at least three 
abbeys. Alfred looms through the mists of time as a singularly 


ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NATION 


261 


lovable man. There is not, in the many records of his age, in¬ 
cluding a contemporary life by the Welsh bishop Asser, a single 
line that would darken or stain his flawless character. Alfred 
was great not only for what he did but also for what he was. 

For three-quarters of a century after the death of Alfred, in 
901, steady progress was made by Anglo-Saxon England along 
the lines laid down by the great king. Alfred’s son Edward the 
Elder (901-923) and his grandson Athelstan (925-940) re¬ 
conquered the Danelaw, bit by bit. The Saxons had copied the 
Danish methods of fighting by now, and were beating them at 
their own game. The English language, the Christian religion, 
and Saxon laws were restored in the Danelaw. Weaker kings 
followed Athelstan, but England was very fortunate in having for 
some years “a power behind the throne” in Dunstan, the Saxon 
archbishop of Canterbury (957-988). Dunstan continued the 
policy of assimilating the Danelaw and of unifying the diverse 
communities of Anglo-Saxon England. Dunstan was a learned 
man, having passed through the monastic school of Glaston¬ 
bury, where a famous library had been built up since Alfred’s 
time. A wave of monastic revival from the Continent, the Cluny 
movement, swept over England in Dunstan’s day. 

Institutions of Anglo-Saxon England 

From Anglo-Saxon England we in America have drawn more 
of our law and government than from any other historical 
source. This will be evident as we proceed. The all-pervading 
unit of economic and political life among the early Angles and 
Saxons, as among other early Germanic peoples, was the village. 
This was a single great farm occupied and cultivated by a village 
community, whose members lived in log-cabins clustered to¬ 
gether for better security, no doubt. Spreading out from the 
central nucleus lay the great fields of arable land, the woods, 
the waste land, the pasture, and so on. Each village was also 
an ecclesiastical parish, the boundaries of the two being coter¬ 
minous in most cases. The parish church ministered to prac¬ 
tically every interest the villagers had aside from the hard 
labor of the fields. Among the “ rights” enjoyed by the vil¬ 
lagers were those of attending service in the church and of 


262 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


being buried in the churchyard. Village life was regulated by an 
assembly of the villagers, called a town-moot. Here were passed 
the by-laws so necessary to the maintenance of the cooperative 
farming; here the burdens laid upon the people by church and 
state were shouldered; here town officers were elected; and 
here petty offenders were dealt with, in accordance with im¬ 
memorial village custom. Throughout Anglo-Saxon history the 
slow pioneering work of multiplying villages went on, by re¬ 
claiming waste land, by draining swamps, and above all by 
clearing the forests. 

The territorial division next above the village was the hun¬ 
dred. As among the Germans on the Continent, the hundred 
was a judicial unit, first of all. It had a moot made up of “ rep¬ 
resentatives ” of each village, the reeve and at least four of the 
village’s “best men” being obliged to come. Some of the larger 
landed proprietors appeared, also. Presiding over the hundred 
was a hundred-man, chosen by the central government. The 
judicial work of the hundred-moot was most important. In 
general, the security of life and property throughout the hun¬ 
dred rested upon it. Local custom was enforced and amplified 
by laws laid down by the central government. Of course persons 
and cases too big for the hundred to handle had to be dealt 
with higher up. The hundreds were also administrative units 
in assessments of men and money made by the central gov¬ 
ernment. 

The shire, containing many hundreds, was the next larger 
unit. The word shire is akin to “share” and “shear”, which 
suggest its original meaning. As the original kingdoms ex¬ 
panded it became necessary to divide some of them into shires, 
thus interposing a fresh division of territory between the hun¬ 
dred and the kingdom. All those who attended the hundred- 
moot were obliged to go to the shire-moot also. The local mag¬ 
nates of the shire also attended in large numbers. One of these 
magnates was designated by the central government as the 
presiding officer, under the name of ealdorman. Alongside the 
ealdorman sat the local bishop, thus illustrating the close rela¬ 
tionship of church and state in the Anglo-Saxon period. 

The shire-moot dealt with judicial work too difficult or too 


ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NATION 


263 


important for the hundreds to handle. It listened to messages 
from the central government and took appropriate action. 
These messages were concerned for the most part with the de¬ 
fense of the realm. The shire was the defensive unit, the fight¬ 
ing men of the kingdom assembling by shires and being led by 
their ealdormen. The old obligation of every freeman to serve 
in the army never died out so long as there were freemen left, 
the whole body of free warriors being known, in Anglo-Saxon 
England, as the fyrd. The king’s interests in each shire were 
represented and looked after by a royal appointee known as 
the sheriff (shire reeve). This official collected the king’s in¬ 
come, executed the law, and acted as a general administrative 
official for the central government. 

Reference has been made several times, in our outline of 
Anglo-Saxon institutions, to the “central government”. This 
is a pretty modern term to use, no doubt, and it is time to see 
just what meaning it should convey in the England of before 
the Norman Conquest. First, there was the body known as 
the Witanagemot, “the council of the wise men”, or, more 
shortly, the Witan. This was made up of the great men of the 
realm, great landed proprietors, especially ealdormen, bishops 
and abbots, and sheriffs. Members of the royal family also 
attended, including, of course, the king. Normally the Witan 
was called into session by the king, who presided over its de¬ 
liberations. With its advice and consent the king promulgated 
the laws, appointed ealdormen and bishops, made grants of 
land, provided for the defense, made treaties, and, in general, 
did whatever seemed necessary or desirable in governing the 
kingdom. Then there was the king. He was chosen by the Wi¬ 
tan, though that body usually chose the most eligible of the 
royal family. As on the Continent the Anglo-Saxon kings 
claimed descent from the gods and thus attempted to embody 
the national traditions. The king was crowned by the arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury with elaborate ceremony, much of which 
is still used. Each new king by custom took an oath to rule 
justly. Thus we find in the Anglo-Saxon kingship the traditions 
of election and of an oath of office, still very important in the 
chief magistracies of England and America. 


264 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


So far we have seen little more than the political framework 
of government. We must now enquire what sorts and con¬ 
ditions of men there were in Anglo-Saxon England. Social and 
economic conditions in England were very much what they 
were on the Continent in this period. When the Anglo-Saxons 
invaded Roman Britain they were no longer a primitive democ¬ 
racy. Already they had developed a kingship, and an aristoc¬ 
racy had grown up among them. Furthermore, they found the 
Roman villa system already well established, and the Anglo- 
Saxons were an agricultural people. It is beyond doubt, there¬ 
fore, that there were some dependent villages in England from 
the very first. Thus the seeds of social and economic feudalism 
were planted early in English soil, and they grew. Strife be¬ 
tween kingdom and kingdom in the centuries before unification 
was a favoring factor. The plundering raids of the Danes were 
another. The huge endowments of land which the church se¬ 
cured for its bishoprics and abbeys were a third. Economic 
and social feudalism was hardly less complete, in tenth century 
England, than in contemporary Europe. There were few free 
villages left. 

Feudalism as a system of government, however, was far less 
completely developed. The old Anglo-Saxon organization of 
town and hundred and shire remained intact. The town might 
be a “village full of serfs ”, in the tenth century, but it still sent 
the reeve, the priest, and four men to the assemblies of the hun¬ 
dred and the shire. An entire hundred might be subject to a 
lord, but the hundred-moot still met, and the good old customs 
were maintained. The old Saxon fyrd was summoned as usual, 
though an army of magnates with their mounted retainers had 
been developed also. There was thus a dualism in later Anglo- 
Saxon times, the newer feudal institutions never fully displacing 
the older institutions of the primitive democracy. 

Anglo-Saxon Literature and Learning 

As English-speaking persons we are especially interested in 
the literature and learning of the Anglo-Saxon period. Down 
to the Danish invasions the literary center of England was in 
the north. The greatest epic in Anglo-Saxon literature was a 


ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NATION 


265 


pagan poem, “Beowulf”. Folk tales and heroic legends are 
combined in this epic, which was originally composed in the 
Northumbrian dialect, probably in the seventh century. The 
chief historical characters are probably of the sixth century. 
Christian poetry appears in the north at the beginning of 
the eighth century, in the poetry of Caedmon and Cynewulf. 
These poets and their followers told the stories of the Bible 
in verse; the heroes and saints of Holy Writ comport themselves 
in the manner of the Saxon chiefs of pagan times. The most 
famous prose writer of the north was Bede (d. 735 a.d.), and 
being a monk and a learned man, he wrote in Latin. Well 
grounded in all the learning of his time, Bede the Venerable 
wrote voluminously. His best known work, and it is one of 
the classics of historical literature, is his “Ecclesiastical History 
of the English Nation”, from the invasions of Julius Caesar to 
the year 731 a.d. This is the best, as it is almost the sole, 
source of information for the period it covers. Bede used various 
authorities now mostly vanished for the years before his own 
time, and he displays good critical judgment in using them. One 
of Bede’s pupils was Alcuin of York. Alcuin became the most 
learned man of western Europe in his time. His library at York 
rivaled that of the pope at Rome. Alcuin’s own writings were 
chiefly theological. Such was his fame that he became, it will 
be recalled, the organizer of education in the Frankish empire 
under Charlemagne. 

After the death of Alcuin (804) the Danish invaders destroyed 
all literature and learning in the north. Wessex, rescued from 
the harassing hands of the Danes by the courage and skill 
of Alfred, became the next literary and cultural center of Eng¬ 
land. Alfred himself was teacher, translator, and writer, it 
will be remembered. To his translations the royal scholar ap¬ 
pended explanatory comments and supplementary notes, draw¬ 
ing upon his own experience and observation, as well as other 
sources. Alfred translated the “Pastoral Care” of the great 
Pope Gregory, already noticed, and also a “History of the 
World” by Orosius, and other works. In his writings Alfred 
reveals the sincerity, the deep sympathy for his people, and 
the religious nature which characterized him. His style is good, 


266 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


but not so smoothly flowing or finished as that of later Saxon 
writers. 

Of these later writers the greatest was iElfric, who was also 
the greatest of all writers of Old English prose. iElfric was 
born in Wessex in 955, and died about 1020. He was a monk, 
and he became a teacher in a monastic school and finally abbot. 
iElfric wrote sermons, pastoral letters, and lives of the saints. 
His style is simple, clear, and smooth. 

Failure of the Anglo-Saxon Monarchy 

The progress of Anglo-Saxon England under the house of 
Wessex had been steady. Population increased; a few towns 
sprang up, and certain crafts and trades appeared. Monasteries 
multiplied, and that meant much for the advance of civiliza¬ 
tion in those days. Feudalism was developing, also, and it 
must not be forgotten that feudalism meant an advance in 
civilization. The Anglo-Saxon monarchy, especially in the 
century which included Alfred and his successors (870-978), had 
furnished vigorous and successful leaders. But the next one 
hundred years were to see the failure of the Anglo-Saxon mon¬ 
archy and its elimination from the leadership of England, as 
the Carolingian monarchy had been eliminated from France 
and Germany. The reasons are two-fold. First, the Anglo-Saxon 
kings failed to understand clearly and to grapple skillfully with 
political feudalism, now developing rapidly. The magnates 
were growing apace. Ealdormen were no longer content to 
be at the head of single shires; they began to group shires 
together in great earldoms, and to endeavor to exclude the royal 
authority altogether. The four great earls of Wessex, Mercia, 
East Anglia, and Northumbria came to be bigger men than 
the king himself. The second reason for the failure of the mon¬ 
archy was that the Scandinavian world suddenly attacked Eng¬ 
land in overwhelming strength and twice conquered her, once 
in 1016 and again in 1066. 

The Scandinavian Conquest 

With the conquest of 1016 we may deal briefly, and with that 
of 1066 more at length. There had come to the throne of Eng- 


ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NATION 


267 


land in 978 an incapable king named Ethelred and nicknamed 
“the Unready ”, who reigned for nearly forty years. Govern¬ 
ment fell to pieces under this king. He could not control his 
barons. Ethelred was so unlucky as to live in an age when the 
Viking world was achieving political union. Its expansive force 
reached a maximum. England was attacked again and again. 
Recourse was weakly had to buying off the Danes. A land tax 
was levied on the whole kingdom under the name of Danegeld, 
and England became a tributary state of Scandinavia. Worse 
was to follow. Sweyn Forkbeard, pagan king and unifier of 
Scandinavia, with his son Cnut invaded England in 1016. King 
Ethelred and his family fled to the Continent. Cnut succeeded 
his father as head of the Scandinavian empire the following 
year. It seemed that England was to be engulfed in the pagan 
world of Scandinavia. But Cnut the pagan became Cnut the 
Christian, and the king embraced the new faith with all the 
zeal of a convert, founding monasteries, enriching cathedrals, 
and making a pilgrimage to Rome. King Cnut preferred Chris¬ 
tian England to pagan Scandinavia, and he made England a 
good king of the Saxon sort, being elected by the Witan, crowned 
by the archbishop of Canterbury, and sworn to govern justly 
and in accordance with the good old customs. After Cnut’s 
death in 1035 the connection with Scandinavia was soon severed. 1 

A brief restoration of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy came in the 
person of Edward, called the “Confessor” (1042-1066), but it 
was a restoration in form, not in fact. Edward was the son of 
Ethelred the Unready. His mother was a Norman princess 
named Emma. This lady, by the way, is unique in English 
history as having been the widow of two English kings (Ethel¬ 
red and Cnut). Edward was thirty years old, in 1042, and had 
lived twenty-five years in Normandy. His speech was Norman 
French. His tastes were Norman. His closest friends and ad¬ 
visers were Norman, and they followed the new king to Eng¬ 
land. Two Normans became bishops. Norman traders, crafts¬ 
men, and builders entered England in considerable numbers. 
The twenty-four year reign of Edward the Confessor may be 
regarded as the struggle of the 100 per cent Anglo-Saxons 

1 Under Cnut’s sons Harold and Harthacnut, 1035-1042. 


268 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


against Norman influence. The leader of the 100 per centers 
was Godwin, earl of Wessex. He had been invested with his 
earldom by Cnut, whose right-hand man he had been. God¬ 
win dominated the Witan through much of Edward’s reign. 
He obtained the appointment of three of his sons to other Eng¬ 
lish earldoms. On his death Harold, son of Godwin, succeeded 
to most of his father’s power and influence. 

The Norman Conquest 

The death of the pious Edward, in 1066, induced a crisis. 
Edward left no direct heirs. Harold, Godwin’s son, promptly 
claimed the throne and was duly elected by the Witan, which he 
controlled. Thus it appeared that the Anglo-Saxon party had 
triumphed. But a powerful rival came forward to dispute the 
claim of Harold. This was William, duke of Normandy, own 
cousin of the dead king, claiming the throne of England as the 
lawful heir. The “Norman Conquest”, then, was a dispute 
over the succession between a Saxon candidate and a Norman 
candidate. Harold had been elected by the Witan, it is true, 
but he was not of the blood royal, and this counted heavily 
against him in those days. Duke William was close kin, but 
the Witan had passed him by. Thus neither Harold nor William 
had an unimpeachable title. In those days, it will be remem¬ 
bered, law suits were determined by an ordeal of some sort. 
Quite frequently this ordeal took the form of a duellum, or ordeal 
of battle, in which God was thought to side with the right. 
Thus Hastings was the field upon which was decided, by ordeal 
of battle, whether Harold or William had the better right to be 
the successor of Edward the Confessor. 

Whether or not God was on his side, Duke William was a 
most formidable antagonist. Normandy had been founded by 
Rollo and his Norse followers at the beginning of the tenth 
century, as we have seen. The fifth duke in succession to Rollo 
had died in 1035 leaving as his sole heir a boy of seven, named 
William. This boy, furthermore, was of illegitimate birth, his 
mother having been a tanner’s daughter. Such was the inau¬ 
spicious beginning of Duke William’s career. The obstacles 
thrown across his path by his overlord, the French king, and 


ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NATION 


269 


by the duke’s own barons can be easily imagined. William 
fought his way through them and grew up to be a tall and pow¬ 
erful man, of keen insight, swift decision, and ruthless action. 
In 1051 he paid a visit to his cousin Edward, the Anglo-Saxon 
king. Already William was casting his eye on the succession. 

On the news of Edward’s death and Harold’s election, Wil¬ 
liam began to collect an army. His own barons and knights 
were not obliged to serve him in an enterprise of this character, 
of course, but William secured the services of many of them by 
the promise of English lands. Neighboring principalities offered 
contingents of knights on the same terms. The duke then ap¬ 
pealed to the pope, representing Harold as an oath-breaker, 
the English people as schismatic and opposed to clerical re¬ 
forms, and himself as the rightful heir. Apparently the pope 
was convinced, for he sent William a consecrated banner and 
his blessing. 

A single battle decided the event. When William landed in 
England, in the southeast, Harold was in the north, whither 
he had gone to meet the attack of Harold Hardrada, king of 
Norway, who represented Cnut’s claims to the English throne. 
Him Harold of England beat at Stamford Bridge in one of the 
most brilliant victories ever won by an Anglo-Saxon king over 
the Scandinavians. Meanwhile William was harrying the 
countryside, so Harold hastened southward. Two of his earls 
declined to support him in this crisis. Harold’s personal fol¬ 
lowing was weary from much marching. The Normans were 
fresher, more numerous, and better armed. They met at Hast¬ 
ings. Harold and two of his brothers were killed in the battle, 
as were many of their principal followers. William followed 
up his advantage with so much skill that London surrendered 
without a struggle, the Witan elected him king, and he was 
crowned in Westminster Abbey in the Anglo-Saxon fashion by 
the newly chosen archbishop of Canterbury. 

The Effect of the Norman Conquest 

The importance of the Norman Conquest of England is 
very great. It changed the course of English history. The Eng¬ 
lish government had been disintegrating, with the progress of 


270 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


political feudalism. This was stopped. King William abolished 
the four earldoms by breaking them up. He kept forty per 
cent of the land in his own hands as a private estate, being 
thus by far the largest landholder in England. Further, the 
lands of his barons lay scattered, not in compact blocks. This 
is quite in contrast to the fashion on the Continent. English 
bishops and abbots, as well as lay barons, were obliged to do 
military service and government work for the king. The barons’ 
own undertenants were sworn not to fight against the king, 
furthermore. In one word, William established in England a 
feudal absolutism. 

Master of his barons, William was no less a master of the 
clergy. This is remarkable as the reign of William fell in the 
age of Hildebrand. Duke William had seen fit to seek papal 
approval for his expedition to England, but he refused to take 
an oath of fealty to the pope at the pope’s command. Further¬ 
more, William laid down the law to the church. First, no pope 
might be recognized in England without the king’s consent. 
Secondly, no papal bull might be published in England with¬ 
out royal authority. Thirdly, no tenant-in-chief of the king 
might be excommunicated without the king’s consent. The 
strong line here taken by William the Conqueror became a 
tradition with the English monarchy in its dealings with the 
papacy throughout the middle ages. Not that William opposed 
the pope’s reform program; he merely wanted to do the reform¬ 
ing himself. Accordingly, he made the Norman abbot Lanfranc 
his new archbishop of Canterbury. Lanfranc was an organizer, 
not a scholar or saint. He proceeded to bring the Anglo-Saxon 
church up to continental standards. Simony was abolished 
and the marriage of the clergy forbidden; cathedral chapters 
and monasteries were reformed. Moreover, in conformity with 
continental practice, the seats of Anglo-Saxon bishoprics were 
removed from the small villages and placed in the larger towns. 
Then a building program was begun and beautiful new stone 
churches and cathedrals were constructed in the Norman style. 
Many of them are still standing. The new unity of England was 
declared in the supremacy of Canterbury over York, one of the 
major decisions of William the Conqueror. 


ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NATION 


271 


Thus was the Anglo-Saxon church reformed and reorganized. 
And what was the fate of the Anglo-Saxon system of govern¬ 
ment? The Witan must have seemed to William very like the 
feudal Great Councils with which he was familiar on the Con¬ 
tinent. Tenants-in-chief of the king, whether bishops, abbots, 
or lay barons, holding their lands of the king on condition of 
military service, all owed the service of attending his court, 
as we have seen. Thus the Anglo-Saxon Witan, without too 
great a transformation, became a feudal Great Council. But 
what of the shires and hundreds, with their popular assemblies 
and their ancient customs? There was nothing feudal about 
them, nor had William any experience with such bodies on the 
Continent. It might be assumed that William would sweep 
them aside. As a matter of fact, and it is one of the most im¬ 
portant facts in English history, William did nothing of the 
sort. It must be remembered that he claimed the throne of 
England as the lawful successor of Edward the Confessor; the 
Conquest was not a conquest. No doubt this was a pose, but 
William seemed to feel it necessary to maintain the pose. 
Thus the question of the continuing or the discontinuing of 
Anglo-Saxon laws, customs, and institutions simply did not arise. 

Let us turn to the effect of the Conquest on language and 
literature. There were no less than three languages in England 
after the Conquest. It may be said that the first estate spoke 
Latin, the second estate, French, and the third estate, Anglo- 
Saxon. The stream of literature in Anglo-Saxon, so promising 
before the Conquest, dried up. Nobody who was anybody, or 
who pretended to be, cared to read or write what had now be¬ 
come the language of serfs. The higher clergy, furthermore, 
were now Norman aristocrats for the most part, and the Nor¬ 
man church ceased to bring learning to the common people in 
their own language, as the Anglo-Saxon church had done. 
There came to be a Norman French literature in England, and 
there was of course a Latin literature. But for three hundred 
years after the Conquest there ceased to be literature in Anglo- 
Saxon. 1 What happened to the Anglo-Saxon language during 

1 There are a few exceptions to this statement, but they are not im¬ 
portant. 


272 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


those three centuries? We shall learn when we see it emerge in 
the poetry of Chaucer and Langland, in the fourteenth century. 

For Further Reading 
G. M. Trevelyan, History of England, Bk. I 

E. Wingfield-Stratford, The History of British Civilization, Bk. I, 

chaps. 1, 2, 3, and 4 

Cambridge Mediseval History, I, chap. 13; II, chap. 17; III, chaps. 14 
and 15 

William Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, vol. I 
C. W. C. Oman, England before the Norman Conquest 
T. Hodgkin, The History of England from the Earliest Times to the Nor¬ 
man Conquest 

G. B. Adams, The Political History of England, 1066-1216 

F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond 

C. Plummer, The Life and Times of Alfred the Great 
L. M. Larson, Canute the Great 
F. M. Stenton, William the Conqueror 
Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 


GROWTH OF THE MEDIAEVAL PAPACY; THE 
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 

We have seen how the bishop of Rome became the recog¬ 
nized head of the whole Christian church in the West. We have 
also seen that the pope had established himself in the Italian 
peninsula as a temporal sovereign, the ruler of central Italy 
from Parma on the north to Apulia on the south, the so-called 
“States of the Church ”. Successive popes, therefore, stood in 
a special relation to the Italian peninsula as well as in a general 
relation to the whole of western Europe. These two relation¬ 
ships reacted upon one another in the determination of papal 
policy in the middle ages, and it is important to keep both of 
them in mind. In the period between the tenth and the twelfth 
centuries, when the foundations of the feudal kingdoms of Ger¬ 
many, France, and England were being laid, changes of the 
greatest importance were taking place in the church also. 
These changes affected the position of the papacy both in the 
Italian peninsula and in Europe as a whole. 

Italy about 1000 a.d. 

We will begin with the Italian peninsula, as it was at the end 
of the tenth century. In the north was the kingdom of Lom¬ 
bardy. The iron crown of the Lombard kings was now claimed 
and assumed by the successive kings of Germany, who were 
also the potential heads of the Holy Roman Empire. Next, to 
the south, were the States of the Church. Here the popes were 
sovereign, but successive German emperors, from Otto I to 
Henry III, had made themselves very much at home in Rome, 
as we have seen. However, their visits were brief and com¬ 
paratively infrequent, and whatever may have been their au¬ 
thority in Rome, it did not extend farther south. Otto I had en¬ 
deavored, indeed, to establish a mark south of Rome and had 

273 


274 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


invested one Pandulf of the Iron Head with a Lombard duchy 
there; but this duchy was subsequently subdivided into three 
parts in the merry feudal fashion (Benevento, Capua, and Sa¬ 
lerno). The allegiance of these three duchies to the Holy Ro¬ 
man Empire meant little. South of these duchies, that is, in 
the southern tip of the peninsula, the Eastern Empire still main¬ 
tained its authority, which was as precarious as it was tenacious. 
Sicily had been definitely lost by the Eastern Empire. While the 
Northmen were establishing themselves in northern and west¬ 
ern Europe in the ninth century, the Saracens were establishing 
themselves in Sicily and in half a century, 827-877, they had 
completed their conquest of the island. From their island base 
the Saracens then raided the mainland. The capture of Sicily 
by the Saracens closed the western Mediterranean to Christian 
commerce. This accounts, in large measure, for the slowness of 
economic development in western Europe during the two cen¬ 
turies which followed. 

The Norman Conquest of Southern Italy and Sicily 

Still another element was now about to be introduced into 
Italy. We have seen that the expansive energy of the North¬ 
men, still unexpended by their conquest of Normandy, over¬ 
flowed in the conquest of England, in 1066. Shortly thereafter 
another outburst of expansive energy took the Normans to 
southern Italy and Sicily. The Norman penetration of England 
took half a century, from the accession of the Norman-loving 
Edward, in 1035, to the death of the Conqueror, in 1087. The 
Norman penetration of southern Italy and Sicily took a full 
century and more, from the landing of the first adventurers at 
Bari, in 1017, to the union of the Two Sicilies under Count 
Roger I, in 1127. England was near at hand and the Normans 
were led by their duke, a veritable king of men; the Sicilies were 
far away and the Norman dukes themselves took no interest 
in the matter. 

It will be remembered that the Normans were great pilgrims. 
There was a shrine of St. Michael at Monte Gargano, in Apulia, 
a brother shrine to that of St. Michael in Normandy. Norman 
knights sometimes stopped at the Italian shrine on their way 


THE PAPACY; SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 275 


to and from Jerusalem. The Lombard barons of Apulia quar¬ 
reled incessantly with their overlords, the representatives of the 
Eastern Empire. Some Norman pilgrim-knights were engaged 
to help the local inhabitants, in 1017. Their prowess in arms 
startled their employers as much as it terrified the foe. Thus 
did the Normans get their first taste of blood. Normandy was 
overpopulated at the time. This happens easily in a feudal 
country where ba- ____ 



ronial families are 
large, agriculture 
the sole economic 
resource, and land 
limited. One petty 
noble of Normandy 
saw five of his sons 
migrate to southern 
Italy in the early 
pioneering days. 
But this group was 
cast in the shade by 
the numerous prog- 


Norman Possessions in Italy and Sicily 


r 1IN ITALY AINU OUJIUX 

eny of another 

Norman noble, named Tancred of Hauteville. Tancred had 
twelve sons, to say nothing of daughters. Six of the twelve 
are known to have gone adventuring to Italy, beginning with 
William of the Iron Arm, and there were doubtless more. 

The most famous of the twelve sons of Tancred was Robert 
Guiscard. He was a blonde giant, broad-shouldered, with the 
strength of a Hercules. His audacity, revealed in his flashing 
eyes, was a match for his strength. Robert came out top man 
in the rough and tumble fighting of the Norman knights. He 
brought the power of the Eastern Empire in southern Italy to 
an end and established himself as lord of the land under the 
title of “Duke of Apulia ”. In a very climax of audacity, Duke 
Robert then carried the war against the eastern emperor, in¬ 
vading his dominions and actually laying siege to Constanti¬ 
nople. To Robert Guiscard’s vaunting ambition the crown of 
the Eastern Empire seemed a proper prize. Robert’s young¬ 


er 



















276 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


est brother, Roger, number twelve in Tancred’s list of sons, 
stood next to Robert himself in point of ability and good 
fortune, and established himself, with his brother’s help, as king 
of Sicily. 

Alliance between the Normans and the Papacy 

In following the fortunes of Robert and Roger we have gotten 
a little ahead of our story. In the fighting which followed the 
advent of the sons of Tancred, in 1034, the unhappy people of 
southern Italy were subjected to a terrible ordeal. Robert Guis- 
card spared neither the aged nor women and children. Churches 
and monasteries also suffered severely at the hands of this ruf¬ 
fian, though his ancestors had been Christians for several gener¬ 
ations. Famine added to the misery of the populace, for the 
Normans systematically destroyed the crops. The wail of the 
plundered people reached the ears of Pope Leo IX at Rome. 
He secured some troops from the German emperor Henry III, 
appealed to the eastern emperor to join hands with him against 
the enemies of civilization, and took the field against the Nor¬ 
mans in person. The papal army was routed in the battle which 
followed (at Civitate, 1053), and the pope himself was taken 
captive by Robert Guiscard and his followers. The Normans 
treated the Vicar of Christ with great respect and released him 
shortly. 

Then came a “diplomatic revolution.” Inspired by the great 
Hildebrand, already the power behind the throne in the papacy, 
the pope began to make friendly overtures to the Normans. 
Surprising as this may seem to us, the Norman adventurers 
being what they were, it was sound policy. The Normans were 
already the most powerful single factor in Italian politics, if we 
except the papacy, and it were well to recognize the fact at 
once. A treaty was signed in 1059. The Normans received the 
papal sanction for their conquests in southern Italy and a grant 
of Sicily (not yet conquered); and they promised to pay the 
pope feudal dues. Robert Guiscard took an oath of fealty to 
the pope as duke of Apulia. He promised to help the pope to 
retain the see of Rome and the papal states and to assist him 
in his program of reform. 


THE PAPACY; SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 277 


The Kingdom of Naples and Sicily 

Sicily was wrested from the Saracens, under the leadership 
of young Roger chiefly, between 1060 and 1100. The Christian 
population of Sicily was large, and the Saracen emirs were nu¬ 
merous and jealous of each other. In 1127 the line of Robert 
Guiscard died out and Sicily and southern Italy were combined 
under Count Roger II, son and successor of Count Roger I. 
Roger II (d. 1154) built up a strong feudal kingdom. He ranks 
as the first king of “Naples and Sicily ”, a kingdom which lasted 
until it was overthrown by Garibaldi in 1860. King Roger con¬ 
tinued the alliance with the papacy, begun in the time of his 
famous uncle. Roger and his successors held the title of “heredi¬ 
tary and perpetual legate of the Holy See.” 

The Church Menaced by Feudalism 

Having seen how the papacy was affected by the advent of 
the Normans in Italy, we must turn to a far more important 
matter, namely, the great religious revival of the tenth and 
eleventh centuries, sometimes called the Cluniac Reformation. 
The Christian church in the West was threatened by the grav¬ 
est danger of its entire history. Feudalism, which had consumed 
lay society as a raging fire, now threatened the church also. It 
was inevitable that this should be so. Feudalism is a system of 
society based on land tenure, and the church had become a 
very great landlord, its average holdings in the various coun¬ 
tries of western Europe amounting to one-third of all the land. 
In ninth century France the richest clergy already held from 
75,000 to 150,000 acres each, and this acreage was enormously 
increased during the next few centuries. Control of the church 
lands became the major political policy of the feudal princes; 
and they succeeded only too well. 

The establishment of feudal control over the church and its 
lands had best be examined in detail, beginning with the parish 
priests. As a class the priests had been reduced to dependence 
on the feudal lords everywhere by the tenth century. A parish 
church was a valuable piece of property; many lords founded 
churches as investments. A landed proprietor could compel his 


278 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


tenants to attend his church just as he could compel them to 
grind their corn at his mill. He could exact tithes, offerings, 
burial fees, and christening fees. He could appoint some cleric, 
whom he used as a secretary or bailiff or even as a menial, to be 
the priest, and make him pay a fee for the appointment. The 
right of appointment to a “ living ”, as it was called, could be 
bought and sold in whole or in part like a piece of property. 
Thus feudal control over the parish priests was complete. The 
spiritual needs and comfort of the parishioners became a matter 
strictly subordinate to the profits of the landlord who owned 
the living. 

Feudal control over archbishops, bishops, and abbots came 
to be hardly less complete. Feudal kings demanded that their 
spiritual barons, as large landed proprietors, should help bear 
the burdens of the state just as their lay brethren did. As far 
back as the eighth century the Carolingian kings had exacted 
military service from the great landholding ecclesiastics. Bish¬ 
ops and abbots led their knights to battle in person, in many 
cases. Odo, bishop of Bayeux, led a contingent of 120 knights 
in the service of Duke William, his brother, and fought at Hast¬ 
ings clad in armor. The worthy bishop swung a mace, since the 
canon law forbade the shedding of blood. “The art of war be¬ 
came a necessary episcopal accomplishment.” 

Naturally enough, the noble fighting class sought to intro¬ 
duce members of their own order into the wealthy bishoprics 
and abbeys, and with complete success. With rare exceptions 
the bishops and abbots were all of the nobility. Many of the 
great ecclesiastics achieved a definite noble rank in the world 
of lay barons. The archbishop of Rheims and two of his French 
bishops were dukes and two other French bishops were counts. 
In Germany the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne held ducal 
rank. Furthermore, these prince-bishops married and sought 
to make their offices hereditary. Marriage of the clergy and the 
inheritance of ecclesiastical office was the usual thing in Italy 
in the tenth century, and so it had become in Normandy and 
elsewhere in the twelfth century. The bishop of Nantes, for 
example, acknowledged that he had been invested with the 
bishopric during the lifetime of his father, the preceding bishop. 


THE PAPACY; SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 279 


We have seen how the German kings placed their younger sons 
and their brothers in high church offices, to keep the church 
lands in the family. More and more the great church offices 
were becoming the prizes of self-seeking politicians, for whom 
the spiritual function of the church was of no importance. 
Everywhere feudal kings and princes were seeking either to 
appoint the prince-bishops and princely abbots out of hand, 
or at least to control their election. 

Finally, the papal office itself was not always free of lay con¬ 
trol. The noble families of Rome, the feudal barons of Italy, 
and the German emperors had all taken a hand in naming the 
pope, not always for the good of that great office. Henry III 
of Germany (1039-1056) deposed three popes and named five. 
To be sure, his choices were excellent and he succeeded in res¬ 
cuing the papacy from a noble Roman family whose influence 
was evil. Even so, the appointment of the spiritual leader of 
Christendom by lay princes was a dangerous practice. 

The Religious Revival of the Eleventh Century 

From this menace of absorption by feudalism the church was 
rescued by a great religious revival. This revival had its be¬ 
ginnings in the tenth century, and it affected all classes. The 
disorders of the times, the by-products of the feudalizing process, 
with plague and famine added, were great and all-pervasive, 
and everywhere men and women turned to religion. One aspect 
of the religious revival was cathedral building. For a time it 
fairly “ snowed churches ” in Europe, especially north of the Alps. 
Building a cathedral became a community enterprise. Peasants 
and nobles, men and women, hitched themselves to the carts and 
hauled building stone to the site. Lighted candles were fastened 
to the carts, and no one was admitted to work who had not been 
to confession. Architects were imported from Italy, and the 
Romanesque type of cathedral thus spread north of the Alps. 

Another phase of the religious revival was the founding of 
new monastic orders wherein the monastic ideal might be wooed 
and pursued with greater zeal. Among these were the order of 
Vallombrosa, the order of the Camoldoli, both Italian, and the 
famous order of Cluny, in Burgundy. 


280 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Still another phase of the revival was a movement to mitigate 
the evils of feudal warfare and to set bounds to the scourge of 
private wars. The “Peace of God ” was the first form which 
this movement took. It was launched at synods of clergy and 
laity in central and southern France, about 990 a.d. From 
there it spread throughout France and, less extensively, through 
other regions of western Europe. The plan was to get all the 
fighting nobility to take oath not to attack, in their incessant 
warfare, clerics, pilgrims, merchants, peasants, women, and 
children; and not to destroy churches, monasteries, cattle, 
growing crops, and farm implements. A typical oath is the 
following: “I will not carry off either ox or cow or any other 
beast of burden; I will seize neither peasant nor merchant; I 
will not take from them their pence, nor oblige them to ransom 
themselves; I do not wish them to lose their goods because of 
wars carried on by their seigniors, and I will not beat them to 
obtain their subsistence. I will seize neither horse, mare, nor 
colt from the pasture; I will not destroy nor burn their houses; 
I will not uproot their vines or gather the grapes under pretext 
of war; I will not destroy mills and I will not take the flour 
therein, unless they are on my land, or unless I am on war serv¬ 
ice.” 1 This oath graphically portrays the uncontrolled rapacity 
and pugnacity of the knightly order, and society’s desperate 
need of protection. 

The second form which the movement against feudal warfare 
took was far more effective. This was the “Truce of God.” 
This first appeared in the south of France also, about 1025 a.d. 
The central idea was to establish periods of time during which 
no fighting whatever should be done. At first the nobles were 
sworn to do no fighting on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of 
each week, as being the three days of the Passion. Then a long 
week-end from sunset on Wednesday to sunrise on Monday 
was instituted. As the idea developed “closed seasons” were 
established. One was to last from the beginning of Lent through 
Whitsuntide. This would protect the planting season. Another 
stretched from the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (Aug- 

1 Oath imposed by the bishop of Beauvais, 1023. From Thompson, 
op. cit., p. 668. 


THE PAPACY; SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 281 


ust 15) to St. Martin’s Day (November 11); this would keep 
the peace during harvest. The Truce of God had a great vogue 
in Italy, France, and Germany. Both clergy and barons joined 
the movement, and the Truce became a part of the law of both 
church and state. In England the Norman kings were strong 
enough to keep order and so the movement made no headway 
there. The Crusades, which were launched at the close of the 
eleventh century, were a part of the general policy of the church 
to divert the fighting instincts of the feudal nobility from their 
fellow Christians in Europe to the infidels abroad. The Cru¬ 
sades were also a further manifestation of the religious revival 
itself. 


The Cluniac Reformation 

But the most important phase of the religious revival was 
the movement to remove the church completely from the con¬ 
trol of feudal society. This movement has received the name of 
the “Cluniac Reformation ”, from its close association with the 
monastery of Cluny. This monastery was founded in Burgundy 
by William, duke of Aquitaine, in 910 a.d. The foundation 
charter provided that the monastery should be forever free of 
lay control of whatever form, and that its lands should owe no 
service to the state. The Cluny idea spread, endowments poured 
in, and the mother monastery, in a notable departure from pre¬ 
vious practice, founded a large number of daughter houses. 
These were widely scattered through Europe, and the Cluny 
idea captured the reform element in the church everywhere. 

As finally formulated the Cluny “platform ” had four planks; 
(1) To free the papal office from lay control; (2) to enforce cleri¬ 
cal celibacy; (3) to establish the absolute authority of the pope 
over all members of the clerical order; and (4) to abolish simony 
and lay investiture, that is, the appointment of bishops and 
archbishops by feudal princes and the investiture of bishops 
and archbishops with their lands and titles by lay princes. To 
formulate this statesmanlike and ambitious program was one 
thing. To enforce it against the powerful forces entrenched 
against it, inside the church as well as out, might well prove 
impossible. 


282 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Hildebrand 

One man, more than any other, translated the program into 
action, and well-nigh achieved the impossible. This man was 
Hildebrand. He was an Italian, born in Saona, the son of a 
carpenter. Entering a monastery as a boy, he studied at Rome 
and then at Cluny. In 1048 he returned to Rome and immedi¬ 
ately became a person of great influence in the papal curia. 
Until’his death in 1085, nearly forty years later, Hildebrand 
was the power behind the throne under successive popes. His 
influence owed nothing to physical advantages for he was a 
small man of unimpressive appearance, with a weak voice. An 
inner fire drove him forward, however, and drew multitudes of 
people after him. Confident of the righteousness of his own 
course, fierce in denunciation and swift in action, Hildebrand 
reminded his associates of the prophet Elijah. His spirit was 
that of the Old Testament, not the New, and the emphasis of 
his life was obedience, not love. “Pope after Pope dies, disap¬ 
pears; Hildebrand still stands unmoved, or is rising more and 
more into eminence.” 1 For the last twelve years of his life 
(1073-1085) Hildebrand was himself pope, taking the title of 
Gregory VII. 

The College of Cardinals 

Let us consider one by one the items in the Cluny program, 
for they were the policy of Hildebrand. First, to free the papal 
office from lay control. This was accomplished, in the Electoral 
Decree of 1059, by the creation of the College of Cardinals. A 
body of seven cardinal bishops was formed to choose the pope. 
The number of cardinals has been increased, gradually, until 
at present it is nearly ten times seven. Their legal right to elect 
the popes has seldom been challenged, and never successfully. 

Enforcement of Celibacy 

The second item of the Cluny program was to enforce celi¬ 
bacy. The transmission of church offices by inheritance must 
be stopped, the reformers urged, and spiritual leaders must be 

1 Milman. Quoted by William Edwards, Notes on European History , I, 
129. 


THE PAPACY; SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 283 

selected for their own spiritual qualities, not those of then- 
fathers. (Of course, preachers’ boys don’t always go wrong!) 
Furthermore, an international viewpoint could more easily be 
maintained in a clergy without family ties. A celibate cleric 
can be readily transferred from country to country for the good 
of the order. Moreover, the mediaeval concept of the truly spir¬ 
itual man, was the celibate. The same synod that drew up the 
Electoral Decree declared the marriage of the clergy illegal also, 
and the war for clerical celibacy was on. It succeeded, but we 
should not forget the sufferings of the wives and families of 
thousands of the married clergy at whose expense the reform 
was achieved. 

Increase of the Papal Authority 

The third item in the Cluny program was that the authority 
of the pope within the church must be made absolute. This 
was not a new idea, of course. The bishops of Rome, as the 
successors of St. Peter, were automatically invested with such 
authority. In practice, however, there had been much local 
autonomy in the church, but the reformers felt that in this 
crisis of the church’s history the supreme authority of the pope 
must be asserted for the church’s good. All bishops were to be 
bound to the pope by a special oath of allegiance. Parish priests 
were to have the right of appeal to the pope against the deci¬ 
sions of their bishop. Papal legates were despatched throughout 
the West by Pope Gregory VII carrying with them his immedi¬ 
ate personal authority and thus superseding all local authority, 
however high. Finally it was asserted that the authority of the 
pope transcended that of any church council. Not all of these 
objectives were achieved immediately; but they are all in the 
line of development which the papal office has since followed. 
Gregory VII fought strenuously for power in the church. 
On one occasion all the archbishops of France were under ex- 
communication at the same time. 

Prohibition of Simony and Lay Investiture 

Having set its own house in order, the church must proceed 
to shake off feudal control. This brings us to the fourth plank 


284 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


in the Cluny platform—the prohibition of simony and of lay 
investiture. That these two practices were widely prevalent 
cannot be doubted. Lay investiture was well-nigh universal; 
it had become the system of government in western Europe. 
Everywhere feudal kings and princes received oaths of homage 
from newly appointed bishops and abbots, invested them with 
their lands, and then exacted military service from them. To 
a lesser degree the feudal kings and princes controlled the ap¬ 
pointments themselves and frequently sold ecclesiastical offices 
to the highest bidder. This was the sin of simony (from 
Simon Magus). A certain French king of the period con¬ 
soled a disappointed bidder for a bishopric with the ad¬ 
vice that he get his richer rival degraded for simony, and 
he could then have the office for his own price. Of course, 
a cleric who had bought an office would wish to hand it down 
to his son; and simony thus links itself with another evil of 
the day. 

The attack on simony and lay investiture was not launched 
until after Hildebrand himself had become pope, in 1073. The 
synod of 1075, held at Rome and presided over by the new pope, 
formally deposed all ecclesiastics who had received investiture 
from any lay person. The reformers felt that all church lands 
had been given to God and that they owed no service, therefore, 
to any lay authority. The decree of 1075 was equivalent to 
annulling the authority of the feudal kings over a third of their 
lands; it was, consequently, a declaration of war by the papacy 
on all the crowned heads of western Europe. The greatest king 
of the day was the king of Germany. Against him the “war of 
the investitures ” was launched first, therefore; the reformers 
rightly felt that a victory in that quarter would make victories 
elsewhere easy. It will be remembered that the king of Germany 
was, by custom, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, also, thus 
claiming the leadership of the Christian world. The war of the 
investitures was therefore a challenge to that claim of leader¬ 
ship. It is this phase of the struggle which has won it the 
name, so generally used, of “the contest between the Empire 
and the Papacy.” 


THE PAPACY; SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 285 


The Situation in Germany 

Our study of Germany thus far has been carried down to the 
death of the emperor Henry III, in 1056. Under that king the 
power of the royal office had been greatly advanced; the feudal 
nobility in Germany had been kept in order; the Slav world 
to the east had been held in check; and Henry had surplus 
power enough to devote much time and energy to setting in 
order the affairs of the church in Rome. His untimely death 
must be deemed a major disaster in the history of the mediaeval 
empire. Another two decades of life would have enabled the 
king to consolidate the authority of his office. Thus the issue 
of the war of the investitures, so soon to break out, might have 
been different, and the whole subsequent history of Germany 
might have taken another course. 

Henry IIFs son and heir, the future Henry IV, was not quite 
six years old at his father’s death. There was no disposition to 
question the boy’s title, which shows how strong the hereditary 
principle in Germany had come to be. A long regency was in 
prospect, however, and a weak one, and this may explain the 
careless acquiescence of the German feudatories in the claims 
of the little Henry. His mother Agnes had been designated 
regent and she turned out to be of the pious but weak type so 
familiar in the political life of the middle ages. The two arch¬ 
bishops of Mainz and Cologne displaced Agnes after five years, 
seizing control of the government and kidnaping the boy king. 
These princes of the church were typical of the pre-Cluny days, 
being worldly, ambitious, and politically-minded, and using 
their offices to enrich and advance themselves and their rela¬ 
tives. Their neglect of all spiritual duties is illustrated by the 
fact that the young Henry grew up in their charge to be a wild 
youth of uncontrolled passions. A political marriage was forced 
upon him, but Henry eventually fell in love with his young 
bride. He then settled down into the harness and took over the 
duties of government, in 1069, at the age of eighteen. 

German kings since Otto I had usually relied upon their bish¬ 
ops and abbots for political support, enriching them with lands 
as a matter of policy. When a bishop or abbot died the king 


286 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


would take over the estate and reap its fruits until a successor 
was appointed. This successor would invariably be named by 
the king, who would usually select some likely cleric of the royal 
chapel of proved loyalty, well trained in the business of govern¬ 
ment. When a council of feudal barons was summoned, there¬ 
fore, the bishops and abbots turned out en masse; the lay bar¬ 
ons were much less likely to put in an appearance. So, also, 
when the king called for the military service due him, prelimi¬ 
nary to a campaign. The spiritual barons loyally met the sum¬ 
mons, while the lay barons were reluctant or delinquent. In 
Lothair ITs Italian expedition of 1136, for example, seventy- 
four per cent of the knights were from church lands. 

The War of the Investitures 

Such was the situation in Germany when Hildebrand became 
pope. The new pope made a point of delaying his consecration 
until he had received King Henry’s approval, though Henry 
had had no voice in the papal election. Gregory VIFs first offi¬ 
cial act, however, was to admonish Henry for his simony and 
his immorality and to send legates to Germany to make a survey 
of the amount of simony and the number of married clergy. 
In 1075 came the decree branding lay investiture as illegal; 
and in the same year Gregory censured Henry for having ap¬ 
pointed the archbishop of Milan, and summoned him to Rome 
to answer for his conduct. 

The significance of these moves was not lost on Henry IV, and 
still less upon the very large number of German clergy wdio 
were married or who held their offices through simony or lay 
investiture. King Henry countered swiftly by summoning a 
synod of German clergy at Worms, in January, 1076, where the 
pope was deposed! “Henry, king not by usurpation but by 
God’s ordinance, to Hildebrand, no longer pope, but false 
monk. ... I, Henry, king by the grace of God, with all of 
my bishops, say unto thee , 1 Come down, come down’.” So ran 
the letter which announced to Pope Gregory the tidings from 
Germany. The pope did not waver. In February, 1076, he ex¬ 
communicated King Henry and deposed him, absolving all the 
king’s vassals from their oaths of homage. 


THE PAPACY; SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 287 


The issue between pope and king was thus squarely joined. 
Most of the lay princes of Germany obeyed the pope and aban¬ 
doned Henry. Our estimate of papal influence as here revealed 
must be tempered by the reflection that many of the German 
baronage were only too ready to find an excuse for casting off 
the royal authority. Late in the same year a council of the bar¬ 
ons of Germany met and invited Gregory to come to Germany 
in the spring and preside over a council which should formally 
sit in judgment on the king. In the meantime the baronial 
council suspended Henry from the exercise of the royal author¬ 
ity. Gregory accepted the invitation of the German princes 
with alacrity and set out for the north. “ It meant for him . . . 
the exhibition to the world of the relative importance of the 
spiritual and temporal powers; Pope Gregory VII sitting in 
judgment on King Henry IV would efface the unhappy memory 
of King Henry III sitting in judgment on Pope Gregory VI 
thirty years before. ,, 1 

The Scene at Canossa 

Evidently the greatest crisis of Henry IV’s reign was at hand. 
He was the kind of man whom adversity exhibits at his best, 
and prosperity at his worst. Henry came to a statesmanlike 
decision; and he acted upon it promptly and with rare stead¬ 
fastness. He resolved to cross to Italy at once, before the pope 
could reach Germany. He would seek out the pope wherever 
he might be and, as a humble penitent, win from him the for¬ 
giveness and absolution which, as Vicar of Christ, Gregory could 
not well deny. 

Eluding the watch set over him, Henry set forth with his 
wife and infant son and only a few attendants. The other passes 
being held by the king’s enemies, the little party had to cross 
into Italy by the Mt. Cenis or western pass. It was a winter of 
exceptional severity, and crossing the Alps by the route Henry 
took would tax the endurance of the hardiest mountaineers. 
Henry and his followers won their way through, however, and 
reached the plain of Lombardy. 

The pope, in the meantime, had got wind of Henry’s coming, 

1 Cambridge Mediaeval History, V, 69. 


288 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


and knowing nothing of his mood or the manner of his coming 
had sought refuge in the castle of the friendly Countess Matilda 
of Tuscany, at Canossa. That lonesome spot in the Apennines 
became the scene of one of the most dramatic episodes of Eu¬ 
ropean history, and one which has not ceased to agitate the 
minds of men. The king made his appearance in the outer court 
of the castle in the garb of a penitent, standing barefoot in the 
snow. Thrice was this repeated, on successive days. The pope 
was in a quandary. To refuse forgiveness, or even to delay it 
too long, would be to shock the conscience of Christendom. 
To absolve the penitent would be to strengthen greatly his po¬ 
litical position in Germany and to postpone if not to forfeit 
victory on the German front in the war of the investitures. 
Was the penitent sincere? Was not his penitential pose a shrewd 
move in a political game? The real drama at Canossa was 
enacted inside the castle and in the bosom of the pope, not in 
the courtyard outside. Whether Henry was sincere or not, for¬ 
giveness could not longer be withheld by the pope or he would 
forfeit his claim to be the revealer of the mind of Christ. Henry 
was forgiven, though on strict terms. 

The Death of Gregory VII, and Final Estimate 

The shriven king hastened northward over the Alps. By his 
abasement at Canossa he had cut the ground out from under 
his feudal vassals in Germany. Henry again took up the struggle 
against the Cluny program. A rival king was set up by the 
papal party in Germany, and Henry was again excommuni¬ 
cated and deposed (1080). This time the sentence had little 
effect. The German bishops stood solidly by their king and 
again deposed Gregory, setting up an antipope. By 1081 Henry 
had the German situation in hand well enough to carry the war 
into Italy. He besieged Rome and took the city, the pope taking 
refuge in the castle of St. Angelo, outside the walls. In Rome, 
on Easter Day, 1084, Henry IV was crowned emperor by the 
antipope Clement III. 

Meanwhile Gregory had been sending frantic appeals to his 
allies the Normans under Robert Guiscard. At length they 
moved northward, and as they advanced Henry IV retreated, 


THE PAPACY; SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 289 


having no notion of facing the formidable Normans. The papal 
allies entered Rome and put the city to a three-day sack, the 
most terrible in its history, putting Goths, Vandals, and Sara¬ 
cens in the shade. The infuriated citizens sought the pope’s 
life, blaming him for their losses, and when the Normans re¬ 
tired southward the pope was compelled to go with them. 
Reaching Salerno, Gregory again excommunicated Henry and 
then died. His last words were, “I have loved righteousness 
and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile.” 

The great pope, the “ Caesar of spiritual conquest ”, did not 
live to see the victory of the cause for which he fought. Indeed, 
his importance lies not so much in what he accomplished as in 
his formulation of a program. From this point of view Greg¬ 
ory VII was the real founder of the mediaeval papacy. He pro¬ 
claimed its right to the suzerainty of Christendom. Papal rule 
is based on righteousness, he said. (Justitia was Gregory’s 
word.) The pope has the right to sit in judgment on kings; 
kingdoms are merely papal fiefs, to be held by kings on condi¬ 
tion of due and loyal service to the pope. It will be noted that 
Gregory'had taken the Cluny program of freeing the church 
from feudal control, a negative policy, and transformed it into 
a program for subjecting the feudal world to papal control. 
What success he had with the German king we have seen. The 
king of France, Philip I, he reproved for simony and threatened 
with excommunication unless he reformed. The king of Norway 
he cautioned not to give aid and comfort to the rebels against 
his neighbor the king of Denmark. The Christian kingdoms of 
Spain and the kingdom of Hungary were claimed as fiefs of the 
papacy. The extension of the papal program to England was 
stoutly resisted by William the Conqueror, however, as we 
have seen. On the whole, this estimate of the great pope seems 
a just one—he was “too absolute, too rigid, too obstinate, too 
extreme to play his part with entire advantage to himself and 
his cause.” 


Compromise of the Investiture Issue 

Henry IV outlived his rival by twenty years. Successive 
popes, of less dynamic force than Gregory, kept up a desultory 


290 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


war with Henry, harping on the string of baronial disaffection 
in Germany. Henry’s own sons were persuaded to take sides 
against their father. Public interest was drawn away from the 
investiture controversy in large measure, however, by the 
launching of the First Crusade, in 1095. This was, indeed, a 
great stroke of policy for the papacy, for the leadership of Chris¬ 
tendom was thus grasped by the pope and not by the emperor. 
Dying in 1106, Henry IV was succeeded by his son Henry V 
(1106-1125), who promptly claimed the full right of investiture 
and compelled the German bishops to fall into line. Taking 
advantage of an unusually favorable turn of events in Germany 
and in Italy, Henry V went to Rome and won the pope, Pas¬ 
chal II, to a remarkable agreement, namely, that the church 
should give up all its endowments, everywhere, to the state. The 
emperor, on his part, agreed to allow freedom of election 
and to renounce the right of investiture. This was a star¬ 
tling lapse into sanity, for that age, and was promptly de¬ 
nounced by the higher clergy everywhere and repudiated by 
the pope himself as soon as he had recovered his freedom 
of action. * 

Nearly every one was thoroughly tired of the investiture con¬ 
troversy, by this time, and a compromise seemed possible. In 
France the issue had never caused any great difficulty. Bishops 
were freely elected by the clergy, and they freely recognized 
the sovereignty of the king. In England a compromise had al¬ 
ready been agreed upon (1106). At length the ghost was laid 
in Germany also. A council met at Worms, in 1122, with a papal 
legate in the chair, and the famous Concordat of Worms was 
drawn up. Elections of bishops and abbots were to be in the 
hands of qualified priests and monks. The elections were to 
take place in the presence of the emperor, however, and he 
might interpose a veto. Investiture was differentiated into 
spiritual and temporal. The pope should invest the bishop- or 
abbot-elect with his “spiritualities”, that is, with the right 
to exercise the spiritual functions of his office, the symbols being 
the ring and crosier. The emperor should then invest the in¬ 
cumbent with his “temporalities”, that is, with the fief that 
went with the office, the symbol being the sceptre. Thus each 


THE PAPACY; SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 291 


bishop and abbot must be a candidate upon whom both church 
and state could agree; and further, the spiritual functions of 
high ecclesiastics and their obligations as barons were both 
clearly recognized. 

The German Monarchy after the Compromise 

The strife over investitures was over but the question of the 
supremacy of church or state, of empire or papacy, remained. 
Half a century after the compromise of Worms a second great 
struggle broke out in which, while the fundamental issue re¬ 
mained the same, the battle ground was shifted. This second 
struggle will form the subject of a later chapter. Meanwhile 
we may note that the effect of the long investiture controversy 
on German political development had been very evil. The Ger¬ 
man feudal nobility had profited to the utmost by the difficul¬ 
ties of their kings. Henry Y left no sons to succeed him, in 1125, 
and the magnates struck a blow at the hereditary principle by 
ignoring Henry’s nephews and electing as king the duke of 
Saxony. On the death of this monarch, (Lothair II, 1125-1137), 
the magnates reverted to one of Henry V’s nephews, now duke 
of Franconia, (Conrad III, 1137-1152). 

Neither king advanced the cause of monarchy in Germany 
to any extent. Lothair II took a hand in Italian politics as a 
result of an unfortunate dispute over the papal office, which 
arose in 1130. The great monastic leader St. Bernard of Clair- 
vaux undertook to end the unfortunate situation and twice 
persuaded Lothair to lead an expedition into Italy in the inter¬ 
ests of Pope Innocent II. Conrad III was persuaded to accept 
the leadership of the ill-fated Second Crusade. For this and 
other reasons he took no part in Italian affairs. He was the 
first king of Germany since Otto I who was not crowned 
emperor in Rome. Lothair II and Conrad III belong to two 
rival houses which were rapidly rising to prominence in 
German politics. Lothair was of the Guelf family, and Conrad, 
of the Ghibbeline, so called from Weiblingen, one of their 
strongholds. The feuds of these two families and of their 
supporters in Germany and in Italy troubled those two lands 
for many generations. 


292 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


For Further Reading 

J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 
chap. 25 

Cambridge Mediaeval History, V, chaps. 1, 2, 3, and 4 

Munro and Sellery, Mediaeval Civilization, pp. 188-201 

C. H. Haskins, The Normans in European History 

A. L. Smith, Church and State in the Middle Ages 

James Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire 

J. W. Thompson, Feudal Germany, chaps. 1, 2, and 3 

T. F. Tout, Empire and Papacy 

P. Villari, Mediaeval Italy 

H. C. Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy, 2 vols. 

F. Gregorovius, History of Rome in the Middle Ages 
H. A. L. Fisher, The Mediaeval Empire 
H. K. Mann, Lives of the Popes, vol. VII 
E. Curtis, Roger of Sicily 


CHAPTER TWENTY 


THE CRUSADES 

Few movements of the middle ages give us such an insight 
into the nature of mediaeval life and the character of mediaeval 
man as do the Crusades. The First Crusade was launched by 
Pope Urban II in a speech before a great church council held 
in Clermont, in the south of France, in 1095. The council had 
just branded simony and lay investiture as illegal and had de¬ 
clared for a celibate clergy. The Crusades, then, were an aspect 
of the Cluny program of freeing the church from lay control 
and securing the supremacy of the pope. This, however, is but a 
small part of their meaning. 

The Crusaders as Pilgrims 

Fundamentally, of course, the Crusades have a religious 
meaning. Mediaeval man was fond of expressing his religious 
sentiment by making a pilgrimage to the shrine of some saint 
or martyr. Prayers said on holy ground were deemed especially 
efficacious. Moreover, much merit accrued to the pilgrim; he 
was relieved in whole or in part from the debt he owed for sins 
previously committed. There were many famous shrines in 
western Europe and some of them grew rich through the gifts 
of pilgrims. Of all possible pilgrimages that to the Holy Land 
was the most valued. This was partly because of its difficulty, 
but much more on account of the sacred associations which 
have made Palestine the Mecca of the Christian world. A pil¬ 
grimage to Jerusalem canceled the debt for all sins, and the 
pilgrim usually kept the garment he wore on entering Jerusalem 
for graveclothes so that his immediate entrance into heaven 
might be assured. Helena, mother of Constantine, made a pil¬ 
grimage to Jerusalem in 326 a.d., when she is said to have 
discovered the True Cross. All through the middle ages a con- 

293 


294 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


tinual stream of pilgrims flowed to Jerusalem, the number of 
pilgrims being especially large in times of religious revival. 

So numerous were western pilgrims by the end of the sixth 
century that Pope Gregory the Great built a hostel for them in 
Jerusalem. Charlemagne built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre 
in Jerusalem; and he ordered that all pilgrims should be helped 
on their way through his dominions. Mediaeval records, frag¬ 
mentary as they are, supply accounts of six pilgrimages to Jeru¬ 
salem in the eighth century, twelve in the ninth, sixteen in the 
tenth, and one hundred and seventeen in the eleventh century. 
One of the eleventh century pilgrimages was a great host of 
more than 11,000 persons, chiefly clergy and knights from 
southern Germany, who set out in 1065. A profusion of guide¬ 
books for the use of pilgrims began to circulate through the 
West. These featured the Holy Places in their crude maps, 
Palestine being all out of proportion to other regions of the 
Near East. Some of these mediaeval Baedekers gave precise 
directions for finding the places where the Ark rested, the bed 
of the palsied man, and even the spot where the whale cast up 
Jonah. The pyramids of Egypt were identified as the seven 
barns of Joseph. Obviously, whatever contributions were made 
by mediaeval pilgrims to scientific geography were quite acci¬ 
dental. 

Of course the great increase of pilgrimages in the eleventh 
century is a phase of the same revival of religion which was ex¬ 
pressing itself in cathedral building and in the Cluny reform. 
It should also be pointed out that the conversion of Hungary to 
Christianity about the year 1000 a.d. greatly facilitated the 
journey of pilgrims overland. The Crusades, then, were pil¬ 
grimages, but they were armed pilgrimages, armed because 
news had come to the West that the Holy Places were being 
profaned. 

Christendom versus Islam 

The Crusades may also be considered as a chapter in the 
struggle between Christendom and Islam. The first chapter 
is Islam aggressive and expanding. This began in 632, ten years 
after the Hegira, and lasted for four and one-half centuries, or 


THE CRUSADES 


295 


until the eve of the Crusades. The Crusades (1096-1270) were 
the reaction of Christian Europe against this expansion of Islam, 
and so constitute the second chapter of the story. 1 

The reaction of Christian Europe against the Moslem world 
began in the western Mediterranean. Supremacy in that region 
had passed to the Mohammedans with their seizure of the 
shore line of North Africa and their capture of Spain, the Ba¬ 
learic Isles, Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily. Mohammedan fleets 
brought Christian commerce to an end, and for two centuries 
the Norse trade route through Russia was western Europe’s 
principal link with the Near East. The recovery of the western 
Mediterranean was the work of the eleventh century, a long 
drawn-out “Crusade” before the Crusades. The cities of the 
west coast of Italy began to build fleets for the protection of 
their coastwise shipping. Genoa and Pisa were the leaders. 
They expelled the Moors from Sardinia in 1015-1017. As their 
trade increased and their fleets grew in size, the two city-states 
began to attack the Moslem ports of Africa. Then came the 
Norman conquest of southern Italy and Sicily. In 1072 the 
Normans captured Palermo from the Moslems, the fleets of 
Genoa and Pisa cooperating. In 1084 the joint fleet of Genoa 
and Pisa captured the capital of Tunis, which was also its chief 
port, and burned the Moslem shipping in the harbor. The year 
1091 marks the completion of the Norman conquest of Sicily. 
Western Europe’s waterway to the Orient was open again. 

At the same time active crusading was going on against the 
Moors in Spain. In a series of campaigns, (1077-1099), the 
armies of Castile gained much ground. Large numbers of 
knightly recruits went to Spain from southern France. The 
Normans joined in the fighting, and the fleets of Genoa and 
Pisa supported the crusading armies. 

Thus the war between Christendom and Islam on the western 
front had reached a conclusive phase. The Christians had the 

1 Chapter three of this interaction of East and West follows the failure 
of the Crusades and sees Islam aggressive again (1270-1683). Constan¬ 
tinople fell in 1453 and Vienna was besieged in 1683. Spain was regained 
by Christendom, however. Chapter four is the period since 1683, and sees 
Islam in a slow decline with the Turk the “sick man of Europe”, and 
Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia under French and British mandates. 


296 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


upper hand. That fact and that alone made plans for the con¬ 
quest of Palestine practicable. The First Crusade, then, was 
merely a shifting of the scene of conflict from the western to 
the eastern Mediterranean. It was inevitable that nearly all 
the leadership of the First Crusade was supplied by Italians, 
Normans, and Frenchmen, already crusaders for years. 

A Crisis in the Near East 

The immediate cause of the First Crusade was a crisis in 
Christian-Moslem relations in the Near East. It will be remem¬ 
bered that the original Mohammedan advance in the Near East 
had overrun all the provinces of the Eastern Empire in Asia 
and Africa save Asia Minor. Mohammedan rule in the lost 
provinces proved to be enlightened and tolerant, however, 
actually an improvement over that of Constantinople. In Pal¬ 
estine, for example, the Holy Places sacred to Christians were, 
for the most part, reverently guarded by the Mohammedan 
governors, under whose protection the thousands of Christian 
pilgrims came and went for centuries. 

This situation was wholly altered, however, by the sudden 
rise of the Seljuk Turks, followed by their conversion to Mo¬ 
hammedanism and their capture of the Caliphate of Asia, at 
Baghdad. The Turks began coming westward and southward 
out of the “dead heart of Asia ” in the ninth and tenth centu¬ 
ries. For centuries before they had dwelt in the zone of steppes, 
and they had, therefore, all the nomad’s fierce distaste for settled 
ways of life. Emerging from the steppes, the Turks proceeded 
to lay waste the trading centers and agricultural communities 
in swift forays. A period of such plundering raids was suc¬ 
ceeded, in a given area, by the establishing of garrisons of Turk¬ 
ish cavalry under a military governor, to whom tribute was 
regularly paid by the native population. Once converted the 
Turks became fanatically devoted to Mohammedanism and 
fiercely intolerant. When they came into contact with the 
Eastern Empire religious warfare flamed up with the intensity 
of the early years of the Faith. In 1071 the eastern emperor 
was killed in battle, at Manzikert, and his army defeated. This 
fatal encounter was followed by an appeal of the new emperor, 


THE CRUSADES 


297 


Michael VII, to Pope Gregory VII for aid. Eager as Gregory 
was to seize this opportunity of Christian leadership, he was 
unable to do so. 

Meanwhile the crisis in the Near East became more acute. 
Within a few years after Manzikert the Turks were in striking 
distance of Constantinople. The emperor Alexius I (1081-1118) 
secured a breathing spell by sacrificing most of his Asiatic terri¬ 
tory. He immediately laid plans for recovering this lost ground, 
however, and in 1094 renewed the appeal to the West, directing 
his plea to Pope Urban II. 

Thus the advance of the Turks had brought to the West, a 
cry for help from the Eastern Empire. It is doubtful, however, 
whether the West would have responded to this cry had it not 
been echoed in another quarter. For the Turks had entered 
Syria, taking the important city of Antioch and, in 1076, cap¬ 
turing Jerusalem from their follow Moslems. Alarming tales 
began to reach the West of the profaning of the Holy Places 
by these fanatical Mohammedans and of the cruel indignities 
which were heaped upon Christian pilgrims. These tales of 
Turkish atrocities naturally lost nothing in the telling, and 
western Christian sentiment became inflamed. To rescue the 
Holy Places was a much more vibrant rallying cry than to go 
to the aid of the eastern emperor. Modern research acquits 
the Turks of deliberate mistreatment of Christian pilgrims and 
of willful defiling of the Holy Places. The Christian population 
in Asia Minor and in Syria did suffer severely as a consequence 
of the prolonged campaigns of the period just prior to the Cru¬ 
sades; but the rest was anti-Islamic propaganda. 

The Appeal of the Pope 

The appeal of the emperor Alexius stirred Pope Urban to 
response. He determined to act. Setting out for the north, he 
summoned a council to meet at Clermont. It was attended by 
thousands of feudal nobles and their followers, besides numerous 
clergy. The council began by reaffirming the familiar items in the 
Cluny program, as we have seen. Then the pope, who had risen 
from the ranks at Cluny, made a speech which by reason of its ef¬ 
fect must be rated as one of the most famous in European history. 


298 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Four of his auditors have left independent accounts of this 
speech. The pope stressed the appeal of the emperor, the peril 
to all Christians in the East, and the shame and disgrace to 
Christendom of allowing the Holy Lands to remain in the pro¬ 
faning hands of the infidels; and he called upon all good Chris¬ 
tians to join in an armed attack upon the Moslems. All who 
joined this Holy War were assured the remission of their sins 
and immediate entrance to Paradise if they perished on the 
field. The whole company were roused to scenes of unparalleled 
enthusiasm, shouting Deus Volt, the war-cry of the Crusades. 
Multitudes of the pope’s hearers immediately “took the pledge ” 
and indicated their solemn purpose of taking the “way of the 
Cross ” by pinning rudely fashioned crosses to their garments. 
The Crusades, thus launched by papal action, became the “for¬ 
eign policy ” of the papacy. For two centuries and more they 
remained one of the principal preoccupations of the successive 
popes. 

From Clermont the contagion spread. Self-appointed as well 
as official agitators or “preachers ” appeared in the various re¬ 
gions of western Europe. Men of every sort and condition for¬ 
sook all and followed after them, and not men only but women 
and children as well. Among the most effective preachers was 
the pope himself. For nine months after Clermont he traveled 
in southern and central France, urging the cause with great 
eloquence and organizing the movement with skill. To the 
pope’s efforts in this period, as well as to the fact of his own 
French birth, is due the fact that the Crusades became at once 
and remained throughout their course a predominantly French 
movement. To this day Europeans in the Near East are known 
to the natives as “Franks ”. 

Crusading Types 

Many crusaders were stirred by genuinely religious motives. 
This was particularly true of the lower classes, and since it was 
the fate of most of these to perish miserably en route, never 
having seen the Promised Land, we cannot fail to be moved by 
the pathos of it all. Very many were moved by motives less 
lofty, though quite normal. Feudal society had a vice of over- 


THE CRUSADES 


299 


production, like modern capitalism. The surplus took the shape 
of land-hungry nobles, mostly younger sons. These predatory 
nobles were constantly on the lookout for opportunities to carve 
out fiefs for themselves. They were responsible for much of 
Christian Europe’s expansion eastward against the Slavs and 
southward (in Spain) against the Moors. Numbers of them had 
joined eagerly in the Norman conquest of England and of Sicily. 
To such men the Crusades were a Godsend. A good example 
of this worldly type was Bohemund, son of Robert Guiscard, of 
whom we shall see much. 

We shall see much, also, of the Italian city-states. Venice was 
already well established in the eastern trade, with the Eastern 
Empire as her “OldAlly”. Genoa and Pisa, being secure in 
the western Mediterranean, were desperately anxious to gain 
a foothold in the Near East. To them, too, the Crusades were 
a heaven-sent opportunity. Even before the First Crusade got 
under way the pope had appealed to Genoa and Pisa for the 
use of their shipping. And our catalogue of motives would not 
be complete without the inclusion of another element of which 
very much is seen in the accounts of the time, the “undesira¬ 
bles Mingled with the loftiest idealism was the basest realism, 
in truly mediaeval fashion. The “riffraff of the West ” is a good 
description of the undesirables—“ wharf rats, beach combers, 
land thieves and water thieves, beggars, charlatans, .♦'adven¬ 
turers, ticket-of-leave men, fugitives from justice, ex-criminals, 
the scum of Europe.” 1 It would be of great interest to the mod¬ 
ern student to know in what proportion the various elements 
above mentioned were represented in the crusading armies, 
but no answer is forthcoming. We do not even know the grand 
total of the First Crusade. Estimates of contemporary writers 
vary from a million to a few hundred thousand. Certainly the 
total must have been very large. 

The Crusade of the Populace 

It will be well to outline the story of the First Crusade with 
some fullness, both because it will reveal the characteristics 
of the Crusades as a whole and because the First Crusade was 

1 Thompson, op. cit ., p. 399. 


300 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the only one that reached its objective. We may distinguish a 
crusade of the populace and a crusade of the princes. Clermont, 
August 15, 1096, had been fixed upon as the place and time 
for the assembling of the crusading hosts, and Bishop Ademar 
of Puy was named the official representative of the pope to 
accompany the expeditionary forces. Months before the official 
date, however, several large and unorganized groups of crusad¬ 
ers, practically unarmed and with little provision for the jour¬ 
ney, had set out for Constantinople. These groups were re¬ 
cruited chiefly in France and in the German Rhineland. There 
were some thousands of men, women, and children, chiefly 
peasants, in each of these groups. Attempting to live off the 
country, they were repeatedly attacked by the Christian popu¬ 
lation of Hungary and Bulgaria through whose lands they 
passed. 

At least two bands reached Constantinople. One was led by 
Peter of Amiens, known also as “ Peter the Hermit He had 
been one of the most eloquent of the popular preachers of the 
Crusades. He claimed to have tasted of Turkish violence per¬ 
sonally, as a pilgrim in Jerusalem. The leader of another group, 
which won its way through the Balkan peninsula, was Walter 
the Penniless (Gualterius sans habere ). Setting out about March, 
1096, these groups reached Constantinople in July. The feelings 
of the emperor Alexius on beholding the pathetic bands who 
came to “aid ” him are better imagined than described. Anxious 
to begin the fighting at once, the crusaders sought means of 
crossing the Bosporus into Asia Minor, and the emperor cal¬ 
lously assisted them to their fate. The Turks cut them to pieces. 
The whitening bones of these earliest crusaders, scattered over 
the landscape, gave to later crusading armies a silent salutation. 
Peter the Hermit escaped and returned to Constantinople to 
await the crusade of the princes. 

The Crusade of the Princes 

In the crusade of the princes no European king took part. 
Henry IV of Germany was in disfavor with the church, it will 
be remembered. Philip I of France was under excommunica¬ 
tion, and William II of England was not a crusading type in 


THE CRUSADES 


301 


any of the many meanings of the phrase. Count Raymond of 
Toulouse had been the first of the feudal barons of Europe to 
take the Cross at Clermont. He was zealous for the cause, but 
was goaded by personal ambition also. Raymond had already 
fought the Moslems in Spain. He led a group of his own knights, 
with others from the south of France. They proceeded to Con¬ 
stantinople overland through Lombardy and Serbia. A second 
division was led by Godfrey de Bouillon, duke of Lower Lor¬ 
raine, a pious, hard-fighting, unselfish knight. His followers 
were Flemings and Germans of the Rhineland, and they marched 
to Constantinople through Hungary. A third division, of French 
knights from the north of France, was led by the brother of 
the king of France, Hugh, count of Vermandois. They marched 
southward through the Italian peninsula to Brindisi, crossed 
the Adriatic to Durazzo, and proceeded thence to Constanti¬ 
nople. 

A fourth division was made up of Normans led by their duke 
Robert, eldest son of William the Conqueror. He was accom¬ 
panied by his uncle Odo, the fighting bishop of Bayeux, and 
also by Count Robert of Flanders and Count Stephen of Blois. 
This division proceeded to Constantinople by way of Calabria, 
Durazzo, and Thessaly. The fifth, and final, division was made 
up of Normans from southern Italy and Sicily. Bands of cru¬ 
saders passing through Sicily had attracted the notice of Bo- 
hemund, son of Robert Guiscard. Cut off from the succession 
by his brother Roger, Bohemund had been waiting for some¬ 
thing to turn up. The Crusade was an opportunity for adven¬ 
ture and possible advancement which he eagerly embraced. 
Bohemund’s group of knights and other followers proceeded 
to the designated rendezvous by crossing the Adriatic to Mace¬ 
donia. This formidable Norman had already had much experi¬ 
ence of warfare against the Moslems in Sicily. He even had 
Moslem troops in his crusading army! Without question Bo¬ 
hemund was the ablest of all the princes of the First Crusade. 

The Crusaders and the Eastern Empire 

The first of the princes arrived in Constantinople in the early 
autumn of 1096, and the last in the late spring of 1097. There 


302 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


arose at once a problem which was never solved during the 
whole period of the Crusades, a fact which goes far toward ex¬ 
plaining their failure. That problem was the relation of the 
crusaders to the Eastern Empire. In the eyes of Alexius the 
crusaders were his allies. They had come to his assistance by 
request, to help roll back the tide of Turkish advance in the 
Empire’s Asiatic possessions. Asia Minor and Syria must be 
recovered if the Empire were to regain any semblance of its 
former power. With Palestine, poor and hard to defend, Alex¬ 
ius was much less concerned. Eastern emperors had regarded 
the Moslem occupation of the Holy City with equanimity for 
centuries. The viewpoint of the crusading princes was quite 
different. They had two objectives in mind, first, that of rescu¬ 
ing the Holy Places from profaning hands, and secondly that 
of carving out fiefs for themselves in the Near East. 

The eastern emperor seems to have considered his position 
carefully and to have had his plan of action well in mind before 
the princes arrived. He desired first of all to make sure that 
the crusading armies passed through his dominions with a mini¬ 
mum of disorder and of damage. Each prince was met at the 
border by an escort with supplies and provisions. Strong guards 
were posted along the line of march to make sure that the cru¬ 
saders behaved themselves. Then, in the spirit of western feudal¬ 
ism, Alexius required each prince to take an oath of homage, 
in advance, for any provinces he might recover for the Empire 
from the Moslems. 

The crusaders proved highly intractable. The emperor’s 
policing irked them. Even the pious Godfrey found it advisable 
to set fire to the suburb assigned to his army for residence, as a 
means of gaining a point with the emperor. The exaction of 
the oath of homage was especially galling. Only the pressure 
of circumstances induced the princes to submit. The emperor 
had much to offer in the difficult campaign ahead—expert 
guides, siege engines, auxiliary troops, and a supporting fleet 
with supplies. These assets were skillfully displayed and flat¬ 
tery and costly presents did the rest. Bohemund himself, who 
had led an invasion against the Empire fifteen years earlier 
and who shared the Normans’ bitter and contemptuous hatred 


THE CRUSADES 303 

of the Greeks, took the required oath. Finally, in April, 1097, 
the crusaders began to cross the Bosporus. 

The March through Asia Minor 

In the meantime there had been developments in the Moslem 
world which were most favorable to the crusading cause. The 
Turkish empire had fallen apart as quickly as it had risen. 
Rival emirs had sprung up and were contending with each 
other. Mosul, Damascus, Aleppo, Antioch, and Iconium were 
each the capital of a Turkish emirate. When the crusaders 
crossed the Bosporus they entered the lands of the emir of Ico¬ 
nium. This emir, with such force as he could muster, was their 
only opponent in Asia Minor. His westernmost stronghold 
was the city of Nicsea, six days’ march from the Bosporus. This 
city the princes promptly besieged and, with material help 
from Alexius, brought to terms. The Turkish garrison craftily 
made terms with the Greeks, however, and the city surrendered 
to Alexius, not to the crusaders. The disappointment of the 
rank and file was acute, for they had looked forward to a 
sack of the city. The princes were mollified by fresh gifts from 
Alexius. 

From Nicsea the army set out across Asia Minor for Antioch, 
a great Turkish stronghold and the gateway to Palestine. The 
line of march lay through Dorylseum and Iconium and so to 
the Taurus mountains. At Dorylseum the emir of Iconium 
made a stand, in ambush. He caught the crusaders in an un¬ 
lucky moment as they were divided into two bodies following 
parallel roads, about two miles apart. The western and the 
nomad methods of fighting differed considerably. The Arab 
pony, nimble and active, bore a rider lightly armed with scim¬ 
itar and javelin or bow and arrow. The rider’s object was 
to keep at a distance from the heavily armed and armored 
Christian knight on his heavy horse, and refuse the shock of a 
charge and the hand to hand combat. Instead, the nomad 
fighter, Turk or Arab, would ride round and round or double 
back and forth, endeavoring to wound the knight or kill his 
horse. At Dorylseum the Turks were not numerous, nor were 
they skillful. The fate of the First Crusade hung in the balance 


304 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


for some hours and then a charge of Norman knights, well- 
timed and perfectly executed, drove the Turks in headlong and 
disastrous flight. The road to Antioch was now open. 

Crossing the Taurus mountains, the crusaders entered Ar¬ 
menia (Minor) where the natives were Christian. A raging 
hunger for fiefs now manifested itself as Tancred, nephew (or 
cousin?) of Bohemund established himself at Adana and Bald¬ 
win of Flanders, brother of Godfrey, at Edessa, farther east. 
Other princes, like Raymond and Bohemund, sent detachments 
of knights hurrying in advance to stake out claims for them 
in the richer lands to the south. 

The Siege of Antioch 

The crusaders reached Antioch in October, 1097, and at once 
laid siege to the city. They were too few to surround the city 
and the siege went forward in a desultory fashion, with the 
Moslem garrison in constant touch with sources of supply out¬ 
side the walls. And here we may as well grapple with the vexed 
problem of numbers; vexed, because the chroniclers of the time 
were not statistically-minded. To many of them a large number 
is 60,000; and a very large number, 600,000. These are, of 
course, “pictorial numbers”, and nothing more. A wealth of 
research has been lavished upon this question in recent times 
and results have been obtained which seem acceptable. Prob¬ 
ably not more than 25,000 or 30,000 crusaders set out across 
Asia Minor. Probably not more than 15,000 arrived before 
the walls of Antioch, for the march had been very difficult and 
death and desertion had thinned the ranks. It is estimated 
that each of the five princes may have had between two hun¬ 
dred and three hundred knights in his command, with enough 
squires and foot soldiers to make his total following two or 
three thousand in all. 

The siege of Antioch continued through the winter and con¬ 
ditions for the besiegers became very trying. With the spring 
ships arrived from the West at the mouth of the Orontes, on 
the banks of which Antioch lay; and with the reenforcements 
thus available the city was completely invested for the first 
time. Even so, Antioch would probably have held out for many 


THE CRUSADES 


305 


months more had not Bohemund succeeded in bribing a dis¬ 
contented Turkish officer to open the gate he commanded. By 
this stroke of fortune the crusaders, early in June, 1098, sud¬ 
denly found themselves inside the city walls. They gave them¬ 
selves over to a passion of killing and looting and lust which 
lasted for days. 


The Battle of Antioch 

In the meantime the Moslems of the Near East were slowly 
rousing to the menace of Christian invasion. The emir of Mosul, 
Corbogha, with some assistance from Damascus and Aleppo, 
began to move westward in the spring of 1098. The crusaders 
before the walls of Antioch seem to have had little realization 
and even little knowledge of the deadly nature of the animosity 
they had aroused. In the midst of their orgy of triumph they 
found themselves besieged in their turn. They were lucky to 
be inside the city. Had Corbogha arrived four days earlier the 
First Crusade would doubtless have ended under the walls of 
Antioch. The position of the crusaders was soon desperate. 
Provisions were exhausted. Robert of Normandy begged for 
bread in the streets. Hundreds escaped over the walls at 
night and sought refuge on board the western galleys in the 
harbor. 

The mood of depression and despair into which the crusaders 
were plunged is illustrated by the episode of the Holy Lance. 
This sacred relic, used in piercing the Saviour’s side as He hung 
on the Cross, was suddenly “ found ” in one of the churches of 
Antioch by a pious monk from the south of France named Peter 
Bartholomew. The despair of the multitude was magically 
transformed into aggressive confidence. It was resolved to issue 
forth from the protecting walls and give battle to the Moslems. 
The princes were induced to lay aside their jealousies and name 
a commander-in-chief, and their choice fell on Bohemund. The 
result was a decisive victory. As Dorylseum had cleared the 
way to Antioch, so the Battle of Antioch, June 28, 1098, cleared 
the road to Jerusalem. Incidentally, this battle broke the hold 
of the Turks on Syria. Thenceforth Moslem opposition to the 
Crusades was furnished by the Fatimite caliphate of Egypt. 


306 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


The Capture of Jerusalem 

It was six months after the battle before the crusaders con¬ 
tinued their march to Jerusalem. The princes were busy at 
fief-making. Godfrey was helping his brother round out the 
County of Edessa. Bohemund and Raymond quarreled bitterly 
over Antioch and Bohemund won, establishing the Principality 
of Antioch. Raymond consoled him¬ 
self by carving out the County of 
Tripoli. The rank and file, mean¬ 
while, were growing restive. Plague 
broke out among them and even 
claimed a distinguished victim in 
Ademar, bishop of Puy, the official 
papal representative. Meanwhile 
the authenticity of the Holy Lance 
was troubling all ranks and it be¬ 
came a cause of bitter quarrel be¬ 
tween the “northerners ” and the 
“southerners” of France. At last 
poor Peter submitted to the ordeal 
of fire, some ten months after his 
lucky (or unlucky) find. He passed 
through the fire and came out alive, 
but he died twelve days later. Then 
the quarrel went on. The men of 
the north said he died of his burns. 
The men of the south said, not so; 
he came through unscathed, they af¬ 
firmed, and not even the smell of 
smoke was on his clothing; but the crowd rushed forward 
to touch him and to secure bits of his garment and “they broke 
his back and smashed him ”, so that he died. 

At length, in June, 1099, the crusaders arrived before Jeru¬ 
salem. The city had a garrison of about one thousand Fatimite 
troops. The besiegers were supplied with provisions and ma¬ 
terials for siege engines by galleys from Pisa and Genoa. The 
siege was short and successful. The sack was swift and horrible. 



Crusaders’ States in Syria 
















THE CRUSADES 


307 


No mercy was shown to women or children. “No barbarian, 
no infidel, no Saracen ever perpetrated such wanton and cold¬ 
blooded atrocities of cruelty as the wearers of the Cross of 
Christ.” 1 Gathering in the church of the Holy Sepulchre the 
crusaders then indulged in an excess of religious emotionalism, 
weeping and embracing each other. 

The Latin Kingdom of Jekusalem 

Jerusalem had been taken and the Holy Places rescued; thus 
the objective of the First Crusade had been attained. Obviously, 
the next step was to consolidate this triumph and provide for 
its maintenance and extension. To this work the crusading 
princes at once set their hands. The Latin Kingdom of Jeru¬ 
salem which they organized and which lasted just under two 
centuries (1099-1291) must be considered the real achievement 
of the First Crusade. This Kingdom was organized as a feudal 
state, naturally enough, for not only were its organizers entirely 
feudal in their outlook, but also local conditions, and especially 
the problem of defense, made such a form of government de¬ 
sirable. There were four principal fiefs in the Kingdom, namely, 
the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the County 
of Tripoli, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem itself. In each of 
these fiefs a rounding out of boundaries went on for some years 
after 1099. The central fief of Jersualem came to include four 
major baronies and some twelve minor ones, besides numerous 
coast towns. 

The institutions of the new Kingdom were gradually per¬ 
fected. Feudal law and custom in all their variety and fullness 
of detail were introduced and feudalism in the Latin Kingdom 
of Jerusalem became more consistent, more perfect, than any¬ 
where in the West. The famous “Assizes of Jerusalem” is a 
codification of feudal law and custom of the Latin Kingdom. 
In these Assizes we find “the most perfect picture of the ideal 
feudal state, and they are themselves the most perfect monu¬ 
ment of feudal law.” 2 

The feudal princes of the new Kingdom had difficulty in 

1 Milman. Quoted by Edwards, op. cit., p. 570. 

2 Cambridge Mediaeval History, V, 303. 


308 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


agreeing upon who should be king. Ultimately Godfrey of 
Bouillon was chosen as a compromise candidate. If he had not 
been conspicuous in leadership so far neither had he been promi¬ 
nent in the miserable quarrels of the princes. Godfrey still 
stands as a satisfying example of the ideal crusader, modest, 
unselfish, and devoted. His modesty is shown in his character¬ 
istic refusal of the title of king and his choice of “Baron of the 
Holy Sepulchre”. His title made no real difference in his posi¬ 
tion or his power. Godfrey lived but one year in office (d. 1100). 
His one achievement, and it was a substantial one, was the de¬ 
feat of an army sent from Egypt to regain Jerusalem and Pal¬ 
estine. This victory relieved the new Kingdom of danger from 
that quarter for some years. Godfrey was succeeded by his 
brother Baldwin, count of Edessa, who did not scruple to as¬ 
sume the full rank and title of king. In this family the title was 
destined to remain for many years. 

Like all feudal kings, those of Jerusalem found as their prin¬ 
cipal political task the securing of aid and support from their 
feudal barons. In the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem this prob¬ 
lem was a particularly difficult one because of the circumstance 
that the three principal fiefs were already well established 
before the kingship was set up. Furthermore, the barons found 
the problem of local defense so pressing that they could spare 
but little time or strength for the kingdom as a whole. Each 
great fief continued to be ruled as a practically independent 
unit. 


The Military Orders 

The Kingdom was kept alive by two factors, both external 
to itself. The first was the constant stream of warrior-pilgrims 
from the West. Every year they came, from nearly every region 
of the West, in bands of varied size, to fight for a few weeks or 
months in whatever campaigns were on, to make the round of 
the Holy Places, and then to return. The later Crusades, which 
historians have agreed to number, were merely unusually large 
outpourings of pilgrims from the West, because of some special 
crisis in the East or of some stirring of religious feeling in the 
West. 


THE CRUSADES 


309 


Many of the pilgrim knights enlisted in military orders. 
Some one conceived the plan of organizing knights into a kind 
of monastic order for the defense of the Holy Places. That is, 
the knights were to take the triple vow of chastity, poverty, 
and obedience, and substitute hard fighting against the infidel 
for the hard labor in the fields of their monastic brethren. One 
such group of knights was given a building in Jerusalem near 
the Temple for headquarters, and they became known as the 
Knights of the Temple, or Templars. The Hospital of St. John 
for the relief of sick and indigent pilgrims had been organized 
at Jerusalem many years before the First Crusade. It was now 
reorganized as the Knights of St. John, or Hospitalers. Nearly 
a century later a group of German crusaders organized the Teu¬ 
tonic Order. Membership in this order was limited to nobles 
of German birth, whereas the other two orders were interna¬ 
tional. The idea of the military order proved very popular. 
Endowments poured in, both in Palestine and in the West, 
and the Templars and Hospitalers, especially, became very 
wealthy. These two great orders were each able to put three 
hundred to five hundred knights in the field at one time. Sad 
to say, the orders became very jealous of each other in time, 
and their quarrels had not a little to do with the final fall of 
the Kingdom of Jerusalem. 

The Italian Cities 

The other factor indispensable to the life of the Latin King¬ 
dom was the Italian cities. Their ships were busied with bring¬ 
ing the annual invasion of western knights to Syria and carry¬ 
ing goods from Syria to the West. Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Amalfi, 
and Marseilles all shared in this enterprise, in the order named. 
Venice had already established herself in the iEgean, in Con¬ 
stantinople, and in the ports of Asia Minor, and consequently 
did not engage in the commerce of Syria as extensively as she 
might otherwise have done. The city-states usually secured 
from the kings of Jerusalem whatever privileges they required. 
Each had its own “quarter ” in the leading coast towns such as 
Tyre, Acre, and Tripoli, where its merchants and other sub¬ 
jects maintained an enclave quite independent of the feudal 


310 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


authority of the Latin Kingdom. Each Italian quarter was a 
self-sufficient community with its warehouses, docks, churches, 
baths, political organization, taxes, police, and so on. 

We shall not be surprised to learn that the Italian merchants 
resident in the East had a businesslike attitude, with an eye 
always to the “main chance ”. It is interesting to observe, 
however, that the Christian barons and knights, who made 
Palestine their home, displayed a spirit no less “modern ”. 
They came to know and to appreciate their Moslem subjects. 
Many of the Moslem city-dwellers were skilled craftsmen whose 
lives the Christian conquerors were only too anxious to spare. 
In agriculture, also, the Moslem natives were adept, and the 
western knights employed them on their farms in large num¬ 
bers, learning Arabic and keeping accounts in that language. 
As time went on the Christian residents became very tolerant 
of the Moslem faith; in the city of Acre the Moslems were even 
allowed to say their prayers in Christian churches. The western¬ 
ers began to adopt Moslem dress, so much more suited to the 
climate than their own, and to adopt the luxuries and the vices 
of the Orient. All of which was gravely shocking to freshly 
arrived crusaders from the West. 

The Second Crusade 

Of the later Crusades the Second, Third, and Fourth are each 
worth a brief note. We have seen that the County of Edessa 
was the outpost of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem to the 
northeast, a sort of frontier “mark ”, over against the Moslems 
of Mesopotamia. Unfortunately for the Christian cause an 
able Turkish officer named Zangi established himself in Mosul 
in 1127. He gradually extended his authority thereabouts, 
taking Aleppo and threatening the Principality of Antioch. 
In 1144 Zangi captured Edessa. This put the Latin Kingdom 
itself in jeopardy and stirred a widespread response in western 
Europe. The preaching of a Crusade was not the work of the 
pope, however, but of that remarkable mediaeval figure whose 
commands popes and kings obeyed, Bernard of Clairvaux. 
At a Council of French clergy and barons held at Easter, 1146, 
Bernard persuaded multitudes to take the Cross, including 


THE CRUSADES 


311 


King Louis VII. Such was the effect of the monk’s fiery elo¬ 
quence at this Council that he had to tear up his cloak to supply 
crosses for the eager suppliants. At a similar Council held in 
Germany at Christmas of the same year other multitudes took 
the Cross. The emperor Conrad III was persuaded to place 
himself at the head of the German crusaders, setting aside im¬ 
portant affairs of state. 

The German army was the first to start, in April, 1147. As 
in the French force which followed it, numbers of lesser folk 
were allowed to go along who had made no adequate provision 
for the journey and whose military value was zero. Much of 
the popular enthusiasm for a Crusade at this time, in both 
Germany and France, was due to the unrest among the masses 
caused by crop failures and subsequent famine. Conrad and 
his band of followers plodded along the old pilgrim route through 
Hungary and Bulgaria to Constantinople. They did not enter 
that city but negotiated with the eastern emperor for guides 
and supplies, and then crossed into Asia Minor. The Germans 
set out across the central tablelands of Asia Minor along the 
route of the First Crusade. The Greek guides proved to be 
rascals; the Greek flour was found to be mixed with chalk; and 
the Turkish opposition constantly stiffened. Conrad suddenly 
did an about-face and ingloriously retraced his steps, arriving 
at Nicaea with not more than one-tenth of his followers. Here 
he was met by the French crusaders under Louis VII. 

The two monarchs now joined forces and set forth once more, 
following the coastal route this time. Here again the Turkish 
opposition proved strong and Conrad again turned back, at 
Ephesus this time. Louis pushed on, was badly beaten in a 
battle with the Turks near Laodicea, and arrived at Attalia, 
February, 1148, with only a few survivors Here the French 
king took ship for Antioch, where he arrived with some of his 
followers in March, 1148. In the meantime Conrad, with a 
small following, had reached Acre by sea, and the two kings 
from the West joined the forces of the Latin Kingdom in be¬ 
sieging Damascus. The siege failed, largely because of treachery 
in the Christian ranks, and the two monarchs made their separate 
ways back home. Thus did the Second Crusade fail miserably. 


312 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


The Fall of Jerusalem 

In the meantime the Moslem menace to Christian Syria 
had increased. And it continued to increase. Zangi (1127-1146) 
was succeeded by his son Nureddin (1146-1174), under whom 
the process of unifying the Moslems of Mesopotamia continued. 
Seizing a favorable moment Nureddin boldly intervened in the 
politics of the Fatimite Caliphate of Egypt. His agent was a 
young Kurdish chieftain named Saladin, who, as a boy, had 
witnessed the failure of the Christians before the walls of Da¬ 
mascus. When Nureddin died in 1174 Saladin managed to 
succeed him both in Egypt and in Mesopotamia. The Kingdom 
of Jerusalem was between an upper and a nether millstone. 
Slowly it was ground to powder. 

Saladin, the most cultivated man and the noblest character, 
Moslem or Christian, of the whole crusading period, set himself 
the objective of ending Christian rule in Syria. He called upon 
the Moslem world to rise in a Holy War, or Jihad, against the 
Christians. The response was formidable. Crossing the Jordan 
into Palestine in 1187 Saladin inflicted a disastrous defeat on 
the Hospitalers and Templars at Nazareth. Castle after castle 
fell before his victorious advance. The army of the king of 
Jerusalem was beaten and, on October 2, 1187, after eighty- 
eight years in Christian hands, Jerusalem fell. The coastal city 
of Tyre was now the only place of importance in the Kingdom 
still left to the Christians. There was no pillaging, no slaughter 
of non-combatants when Jerusalem was taken by Saladin. 
Indeed, the Christians were allowed to depart freely and to 
take with them all their property, a period of grace of forty 
days being allowed for the purpose. The Christians seem to 
have taken the fullest advantage of their privilege, even carry¬ 
ing off much property not their own! “Let them alone,” said 
Saladin, when his attention was called to this, “otherwise they 
will accuse us of bad faith. . . . Give them occasion to praise 
the goodness of our religion.” 

The Crusade of the Kings 

The irresistible advance of Moslem power culminating in 
the fall of Jerusalem stirred western Europe profoundly. The 


THE CRUSADES 


313 


news was borne westward to Italy in a ship with black sails. 
There had been unmistakable signs of a diminution of crusad¬ 
ing zeal, but now, under papal pressure, the three leading mon- 
archs of Europe, Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, Richard 
Coeur de Lion of England, and Philip Augustus of France, took 
the Cross. 

The German king was first to start and he followed the old, 
long, and difficult overland route. His army was carefully se¬ 
lected, all applicants who did not have a certain sum for the 
journey and equipment of a certain standard being rejected. 
Frederick’s was without doubt the most formidable of all cru¬ 
sading expeditions. Its fate was correspondingly striking. Hav¬ 
ing won through the difficult and dangerous interior of Asia 
Minor to Cilicia, the famous leader, while cooling himself in a 
mountain stream, was drowned. Nearly all his followers at 
once turned back, leaving a mere remnant to push on to Antioch. 

Richard and Saladin 

Richard and Philip went by sea, embarking from the south 
of France. Philip and his contingent sailed directly to Acre, 
which a Christian army was then besieging. Richard turned 
aside to take Cyprus, and joined the siege of Acre a little later. 
The siege had been going on for nearly two years but was now 
pushed more vigorously. Richard and Philip promptly fell 
out; there had long been a quarrel between the House of Anjou 
and the House of Capet. The two monarchs took opposite sides 
in a dispute over the succession to the crown of Jerusalem, the 
more unedifying and ridiculous since the Kingdom was mostly 
in Moslem hands. To add to the evils of their situation the 
Christian besiegers of Acre were soon besieged in their turn, 
their camp being hemmed in by Saladin’s army'. 

Under these circumstances the taking of Acre by the Chris¬ 
tians must be deemed a considerable feat. Philip, becoming 
indisposed, went home—“diplomatic illness ”, no doubt. Rich¬ 
ard would have returned also, had he consulted the needs of 
his realms in the West. But needs of that sort were precisely 
the sort of thing Richard never considered. He was a born 
crusader, a troubadour of the south of France, where he had 


314 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


been brought up. He loved fighting, especially personal com¬ 
bat, in which he was formidable. As a strategist he was not 
able. His sheer impetuosity, communicating itself to his goodly 
number of knightly followers, made Richard a considerable 
trouble to Saladin. 

The great Arab leader kept the upper hand with some ease, 
however, opposing Richard’s cruelty to his Moslem captives 
with truly “Christian” mercy to his own captives. Saladin’s 
temper is revealed in his proposal that his brother marry Rich¬ 
ard’s sister, with Palestine as a betrothal gift. The mediaeval 
Christian reaction to this “modern ” proposition can easily be 
imagined. 

King Richard’s single-minded devotion to the Crusade won 
a reward quite out of proportion to the greatness of his accom¬ 
plishments in Palestine in the terms of a truce which was ar¬ 
ranged between himself and Saladin. This truce, to run for 
three years, secured to the Christians a strip of coast from 
Ascalon northward to Acre, with right of access for pilgrims 
to the Holy City. Richard now (1193) turned homeward; and 
in the same year Saladin died. Slight as were the Christian 
gains, the Third Crusade has a dignity and worth which the 
Second altogether lacks. These qualities it drew chiefly from 
the opposing leaders, Richard and Saladin. Richard’s own 
friend and councilor, Hubert Walter, the archbishop of Can¬ 
terbury, wrote of the two rivals, “Were each endowed with the 
virtues of the other, the whole world could not furnish such a 
pair of princes.” 1 

The Fourth Crusade 

At the death of Saladin his dominions were divided among 
his relatives and the power of the Moslem world was greatly 
weakened. The Kingdom of Jerusalem lived on in the coast 
towns. Tripoli and Antioch even made some advance. The 
launching of the Fourth Crusade was due, then, to no special 
crisis either of danger or of opportunity, but was a more or less 
routine expression of papal policy. Pope Innocent III (1198- 
1216), the greatest pope of the middle ages, issued the call for 

1 Cambridge Mediaeval History, V, 312. 



K. o/f^DEN^M ARI 



MEDITERRANEAN LANDS 
AFTER THE FOURTH CRUSADE 

1202-1204 A.D. 


First crusade, 1096 -1099 
Second crusade, 1147-1149 
Third crusade, 1189 -1192 
Fourth crusade, 1202-1204 
Scale of Miles 

200 300 400 


C. -County 

D. =Duchy 
Dom.= Dominion 
Emp.=Empire 
K.= Kingdom 
P.=Principality 


O 




THE M.-N. WORKS, BUFFALO, N. Y. 


Longitude 


West 


East 


from 


Greenwich 








































































































































* 







































































































. 
















. 


















/ 









THE CRUSADES 


315 


a Crusade in 1202. No king responded; indeed the response 
of Europe in general was disappointingly small. The persuasive 
eloquence of a French preacher, Fulk de Neuilly, finally awak¬ 
ened some of the French barons, however, and a half dozen of 
them with their followers began to make plans. It was arranged 
that all should proceed to Venice and go thence by water. 
Egypt, now the seat of Moslem power in the East, was to be 
the objective. 

The merchants of Venice agreed to provide transportation. 
“We will send fifteen galleys for the love of God,” said the 
Venetians, “under these conditions, that we get half the con¬ 
quests.” The contract, in detail, called for the transportation 
to the East of 4500 knights, 9000 squires, and 20,000 foot 
soldiers, at the rate of four marks for each horse and two marks 
for each man, or 85,000 marks in all. The number of crusaders 
who turned up in Venice was much less than had been hoped 
for, and the total sum which the crusaders could raise fell short 
of the sum promised by 34,000 marks. The Venetians oblig¬ 
ingly proposed to let the crusaders work out the balance by 
assisting them in an attack on Zara, a town on the coast of 
Dalmatia, which had long troubled Venetian shipping. 

That Zara was a Christian city belonging to the king of 
Hungary, who was a Roman Catholic and a crusader, was a 
matter of little moment, apparently. Most of the crusaders 
agreed to the offer, excusing themselves to the pope on the 
ground that it was unavoidable under the circumstances. Zara 
was duly captured. The Venetians, excommunicated by the 
pope for their share in this enterprise, now made a proposition 
still more startling. This was that the Crusade should launch 
itself against Constantinople. 

Venetian merchants had long been interested in the trade of 
Constantinople and had prospered greatly. On the whole their 
relations with the imperial authorities had been good. The 
time had come, however, when Venice was no longer content 
with a subordinate position in the eastern trade. As Pisa and 
Genoa and Venice herself had carved out “quarters ” for them¬ 
selves in the ports of Syria, the beginnings of commercial em¬ 
pire, so Venice now proposed to strike boldly at the very 


316 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


seat of power and lay the foundations of her commercial 
supremacy in Constantinople itself amid the debris of the 
Eastern Empire. 

The Capture of Constantinople 

The moment seemed opportune. A palace revolution had 
driven westward Alexius, son of the deposed emperor Isaac II, 
and he had sought out the crusaders at Zara. In return for their 
help in restoring his father to the throne the young prince prom¬ 
ised to pay the crusaders 400,000 marks, supply 10,000 troops 
for their Crusade, and cause the Greek church to submit to 
the Roman. The Venetians were eager to accept the offer, 
but among the crusaders opinions differed. Some felt that it 
was not seemly to make war upon their fellow Christians since 
their vows called for hard fighting against the infidels. In the 
end most of the crusaders consented to the plan, rationalizing 
their decision with the reflection that it was a good thing to 
achieve the union of the Greek and Roman churches and that 
Constantinople would make a good base for later operations 
against Egypt. Naturally the pope protested at this second di¬ 
version of the crusading army. “Ye took not the Cross to 
avenge the wrongs of the prince Alexius,” he wrote. “Ye are 
under the solemn obligation to avenge the Crucified, to Whose 
service ye are sworn.” 

The Fourth Crusade never got farther than Constantinople. 
The city was taken and Isaac and his son Alexius restored. 
The populace rose in fury against the rulers imposed upon them 
by the hated westerners, however, and drove them out. Again 
the crusaders took the city, the Venetian fleet once more de¬ 
livering the decisive stroke. There followed the looting of the 
famous city by the crusaders, in which immense treasures of 
Greek art and literature, the accumulation of centuries, were 
wantonly destroyed. “The pillage is one of the blackest chap¬ 
ters in European history.” 1 Constantinople, which had resisted 
the invasions of the barbarians for seven centuries after the 
fall of Rome, had fallen at last, in 1204 a.d., before the “bar¬ 
barian” Franks and Venetians. 


1 Thompson, op. at., p. 417. 


THE CRUSADES 


317 


The victors set about establishing themselves in character¬ 
istic fashion. The French barons carved out fiefs for themselves 
and set up a feudal kingdom which lived on, at a “poor dying 
rate”, for half a century. The Venetians reserved for themselves 
such possessions as would assure their supremacy on the sea 
and in trade. Islands in the Aegean, ports in the Peloponnesus 
and in Asia Minor, and three-eighths of the city of Constanti¬ 
nople went to Venice in full sovereignty. Between the fall of 
Rome and the discovery of America the Fourth Crusade is the 
most important event in the history of European trade. It es¬ 
tablished the Venetian Empire. 

The End of the Crusades 

The age of the Great Crusades, if such there were, ended with 
the Fourth. Great efforts were made by the popes of the period 
to keep the crusading movement alive all through the thirteenth 
century. As enthusiasm flagged more and more anti-Moslem 
propaganda rose to a higher and higher pitch of exaggeration. 
One tale widely believed was that the Saracens had poisoned 
the pepper which they sold to western merchants, whereby 
thousands died. But it was impossible to whip up enthusiasm 
in the West for a project whose history had been one of continu¬ 
ous futility and failure. The mind of thirteenth century Europe 
was turning to other matters. Even when an emperor like 
Frederick II or a king like St. Louis of France or a prince like 
Edward of England took the Cross no general movement en¬ 
sued. To the men of this century a Crusade was merely “a 
pious aspiration, or at best an incidental pilgrimage.” Venice, 
Genoa, and Pisa, whose support had made the earlier Crusades 
possible, now fell to fighting among themselves for control of 
the commerce which the Crusades themselves had done so much 
to stimulate. In 1291 Acre, the last stronghold of the Latin 
Kingdom of Jerusalem, fell into Moslem hands, and the Cru¬ 
sades were over. 


Results of the Crusades 

To form an accurate estimate of the results of the Crusades 
is one of the more difficult tasks in mediaeval history. Gibbon 


318 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


says flatly that “the lives and labors of millions, which were 
buried in the East, would have been more profitably employed 
in the improvement of their native country/’ Most historians 
have been less pessimistic. Beazley says, “The crusading 
struggle imparted a new culture and material prosperity, a 
restless but obstinate ambition, whose results were seen in the 
Renascence of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in the great 
discoveries of geography and natural science, and in the final 
triumph of European arms and enterprise throughout the 
world.” 1 As to the indirect results of the Crusades, it was the 
opinion of Bishop Stubbs, ordinarily the most cautious of his¬ 
torians, that “it is not too much to say that they have affected, 
and still remotely do affect, almost every political and social 
question.” 

In the Near East 

Such generalizations do not get us very far, however, and 
it will be well to consider the results of the Crusades, actual 
and alleged, in some detail. First, what of the Latin Kingdom 
of Jerusalem, founded in the Near East and maintained there 
through two centuries? What permanent effects did the western 
culture thus introduced have upon the Near East? The answer 
is, none whatever. The Crusades represented an attempt of 
western Europe to impose its culture by force upon a people 
whose civilization was more advanced than its own. It failed. 
Western influences in the Near East to-day are all of recent origin. 

What was the effect of the Crusades on the history of Con¬ 
stantinople and the Eastern Empire? Summoned by the em¬ 
peror Alexius to save his Empire from the Turkish advance, 
the First Crusade, it may be fairly said, did so. The establish¬ 
ment of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem drew the attention 
of the Moslem world away from Constantinople and Moslem 
advance in that quarter was delayed for some centuries. In 
the meantime western Europe had time to organize itself into 
solid nation-states far better able to defend themselves against 
Turkish advance in the sixteenth century than were the feudal 
states of the eleventh. 

1 The Dawn of Modern Geography, II, 395. 


THE CRUSADES 


319 


But our minds are troubled by the reflection that the Eastern 
Empire may have been fatally weakened by the Crusades, and 
that the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 was 
thus made possible. It can hardly be doubted that the Crusades 
contributed to the decline of the Eastern Empire. Her European 
provinces were plundered again and again by the crusaders 
marching overland. Far more serious were the inroads made 
on Byzantine trade by the Italian cities. These inroads under¬ 
mined the economic foundations of the Empire. Further, the 
relations between East and West were embittered by the events 
of the crusading period, the climax being the capture and loot¬ 
ing of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade. With this out¬ 
rage the last shred of neighborly feeling between the Chris¬ 
tians of the East and those of the West disappeared, and when 
Christian Constantinople was battling for her life in the fifteenth 
century she neither expected nor received help from the West. 
As a Greek noble of the crusading period put it, “Better the 
turban of the Prophet than the tiara of the Pope.” 

In the West 

Turning to the West, it is commonly said that the Crusades 
contributed to the downfall of political feudalism and, con¬ 
versely, to the growth of the power of the central government. 
“Modern France is the creation of the Crusades,” we are told. 
Baronial families were weakened through the loss of male heirs 
and the kings of the period benefited correspondingly, it is 
alleged. The case of the counts of Toulouse is cited, four of 
whom died in the East in the space of half a century. Certainly 
the royal power grew in France during the two centuries of 
the Crusades; but the Crusades were not an important factor 
in this process. In Germany and Italy, moreover, disintegra¬ 
tion and not centralization took place during this period, and 
that, too, for reasons not especially related to the Crusades. 

It is commonly said that a feeling of nationality was engen¬ 
dered and fostered by the Crusades. Men began to feel them¬ 
selves to be Germans, or Frenchmen, or Englishmen, or Italians. 
Thus, when the French expedition led by Louis VII, in the 
Second Crusade, followed the route traversed by the German 


320 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


army a few months earlier they met with a hostile reception 
from the populace. “Thus the Germans, going before us, dis¬ 
turbed everything, so that the Greeks fled from our peaceful 
army,” wrote a French chronicler. It has been pointed out, 
too, that the Teutonic Order, founded in 1190 as a national 
order, stands in significant contrast to the international orders 
of the Templars and Hospitalers founded a century earlier. 
On the whole, however, the literature of the Crusades gives 
only slight and infrequent evidence of national feeling. Rival¬ 
ries between groups of crusaders contributed little to the devel¬ 
opment of nationality. 

The Influence of the Papacy 

That the Crusades greatly strengthened the power and in¬ 
fluence of the papacy there can be no doubt. The leadership 
which Pope Urban II seized in the beginning was maintained 
throughout. Princes, kings, and emperors alike submitted to 
this leadership, as well as multitudes of lesser folk. Every cru¬ 
sader was privileged to leave his family and his property under 
the special protection of the church until his return, thus en¬ 
larging the jurisdiction of the church at the expense of the 
state. It will be recalled that when the Crusades were launched 
the position of the papacy was critical. A reform party led by 
Gregory VII was attempting to free the church from secular 
control and even to set the church above the state. The ene¬ 
mies of this program were many and formidable. Half the 
church itself was opposed, as well as nearly all the lay princes 
of Europe. Gregory VII died in exile. Then came the Crusades. 
Through them the popes established their moral leadership 
of Europe and so came close to realizing the ideals of the reform 
party. 

All through the twelfth century the papal leadership con¬ 
tinued, and the response to it was an increasing one. To finance 
the Crusades a system of papal taxation was developed on an 
international scale (the tithe). Papal legates carried the ple¬ 
nary power of the pope into every corner of Europe. “ It is diffi¬ 
cult indeed, except by this explanation [the Crusades], to ac¬ 
count for the amazing difference between the position of the 


THE CRUSADES 


321 


papacy at the accession of Urban II, staggering under the de¬ 
feat of Gregory VII, . . . faced too with a church as yet but 
half-hearted in support of the reforming policy, and the position 
of almost undisputed supremacy occupied by Innocent III ”. 1 

The Growth of Commerce 

The most important effect of the Crusades was the increase 
of commerce between East and West. Through the long length 
of years westerners had traveled to the East by the tens of 
thousands. The crusaders were representative of every social 
class; they were drawn from every community. We may fairly 
suppose that there was scarcely a rural village in the West but 
had welcomed a crusader, home from the wars with tall tales of 
adventure and with still more fascinating “souvenirs ” of his 
trip. Silk and cotton goods, jewelry, sugar, spices, and perfume 
are a few of the items in the long list of eastern goods of which 
the returning crusader became an unwitting advertiser. How 
the crusaders marveled at their first sight and taste of sugar! 
This was at the siege of Antioch, during the First Crusade. 
One of the company, Albert of Aix, wrote as follows: “This 
kind of herb is annually cultivated with great labor. When ripe 
they pound it in a mortar, strain off the juice, and put it in ves¬ 
sels until it coagulates and hardens in appearance like snow or 
white salt. This they use scraped and mixed with bread or dis¬ 
solved in water. The canes they call zucra.” 2 Trade between 
East and West had never absolutely stopped, of course, though 
it is estimated that in the early middle ages it fell to less than 
ten per cent of the volume under the Roman Empire. The 
Crusades built up a market for Oriental goods all over western 
Europe. This in itself would have availed little, had not the 
purchasing power of the West increased at the same time. 

A good measure of the effect of the Crusades on commerce 
is the growth of the maritime cities of Italy,—Venice, Genoa, 
and Pisa, the great middlemen of the period. The population 
of Venice reached 200,000 by the end of the Crusades, and that 
of Genoa, 100,000. Pisa was smaller. Of course it must not 

1 Cambridge Mediaeval History , V, 322. 

2 Quoted by Thompson, op . cit ., p. 396. 


322 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


be assumed that these three cities monopolized the Mediter¬ 
ranean trade. Amalfi, in the south of Italy, Palermo, in Sicily, 
Marseilles, in Provence, and Barcelona, in Christian Spain, 
shared in the trade and prosperity. 

Increase in the volume of commerce brought a great growth 
of shipping and improvements in navigation. The ships of the 
period were mostly galleys propelled by oars, with a sail to help 
when the wind was favorable. With a calm sea and a favoring 
wind such a boat could make the trip from Marseilles to Acre 
in fifteen days. The earlier crusaders had marched overland, 
but the later ones all went by sea. Larger galleys were built, 
capable of transporting 1000 or 1500 persons each, and regular 
sea lanes were laid out. The compass, reintroduced to the West 
by the Arabs, was mounted on a movable pivot by Italian sail¬ 
ors and was used in steering a straight course without visual 
contact with the coast. The first sea charts were now made, 
also. Venice maintained a regular spring and fall sailing for 
crusading “tourists” to the East. Warships were built to pro¬ 
tect commerce. At the close of the Crusades Genoa boasted of 
a fleet of 200 ships manned by 25,000 sailors, and that of Venice 
was undoubtedly larger. 

History and Literature 

Some writers are disposed to see in the Crusades a stimulus 
to the mind of Europe, leading to an intellectual renascence. 
This would seem to be a gross exaggeration. The movement 
of European thought during the period bears little evidence of 
influence from the Crusades. Some incidental effects are ob¬ 
servable in the field of history and literature. Besides a large 
number of “chronicles”, or accounts by personal participants, 
the Crusades produced the greatest historian of the middle ages 
in William, archbishop of Tyre, who wrote a history of the 
Third Crusade. This historian displays fine ability in lucid 
narration, logical arrangement, use of other authorities, and 
in artistic embellishment. Joinville’s Vie de St. Louis wins the 
sympathetic admiration of the reader for the great French king 
and crusader. Several long historical poems in the vernacular 
were the product of the period also, such as the Chanson d’An - 


THE CRUSADES 


323 


tioch, Le Pelerinage de Charlemagne, and others. Naturally 
the Crusades furnished the mediaeval minstrels of that and 
later periods with an abundance of materials. Mediaeval poetry 
in the vernacular was almost the creation of the Crusades. 

The Crusades were dismal failures. The numbers engaging 
in them and their importance in European history have been 
grossly exaggerated, and still are. Yet the persistence of the 
word Crusade, to-day, for a group of men and women who 
share a common ideal is a tribute to the fundamental idealism 
and unity of Christian Europe in the crusading centuries. 
“Never since the fall of Acre has ‘ Christendom ’ acted as a 
united whole.” 


For Further Reading 

E. Barker, The Crusades 
Cambridge Mediaeval History, V, chaps. 7, 8, and 9 
Munro and Sellery, Mediaeval Civilization, pp. 246-276 
J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 
chap. 16 

D. C. Munro, The Middle Ages, chaps. 21 and 25 
T. A. Archer and C. L. Kingsford, The Crusades 
R. A. Newhall, The Crusades 

D. C. Munro, H. Prutz, and C. Diehl, Essays on the Crusades 

C. R. Couder, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem 
W. B. Stevenson, The Crusaders in the East 

A. C. Krey, The First Crusade 

R. B. Yewdale, Bohemund I, Prince of Antioch 

S. L. Poole, Saladin and the Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem 

T. A. Archer, The Crusade of Richard I 

E. Pears, The Fourth Crusade 

D. C. Munro, “The Children’s Crusade”, in American Historical 
Review, vol. XIX, pp. 516-524 

F. C. Woodhouse, The Military and Religious Orders 

J. K. Wright, Geographical Lore in the Time of the Crusades 
C. R. Beazley, The Dawn of Modern Geography 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 


THE REVIVAL OF TRADE AND THE RISE OF 
TOWNS 

The Decline of Cities in the Early Middle Ages 

The slow decline of Roman civilization culminating in the fall 
of Rome in the West had been signalized by the decay of her 
cities. There was a considerable decline in the population as a 
whole, during the period, but the shrinkage of urban population 
was out of all proportion to the rest. It would seem in general 
that as civilization declines so does city-life; the rapid increase 
of urban population, as in present-day America, is commonly 
accepted as an advance in civilization. All the cities of western 
Europe lost heavily during the decline and fall of Roman power. 
Rome itself fell from a city of a million or more to a provincial 
town of some 50,000. The population of the city of Nimes, in 
the south of France, was so depleted that the wretched remnant 
sought refuge from the disorders of the time in the local amphi¬ 
theatre, the walls of which through long generations marked 
the mediaeval confines of the city. In Roman Britain thriving 
towns like Bath were completely abandoned and sank under 
the sod, their very existence forgotten. 

Cities declined because trade declined. It is estimated that 
in the time of Pliny the Roman world invested 100,000,000 
sesterces annually in imports from Asia. In the days of Charle¬ 
magne the volume of Asiatic trade, including that of the Eastern 
Empire, was less than one-tenth as much. Many factors con¬ 
tributed to the decline of trade. The invading Germans were 
agriculturists, unused to town life, with few wants and simple 
tastes. But more serious was the lack of sure and safe com¬ 
munication. The breakdown of Roman authority meant the 
neglect and decay of Rome’s splendid road-system. The roads, 
moreover, became infested with brigands the moment Rome’s 

324 


REVIVAL OF TRADE; RISE OF TOWNS 


325 


strong hand was withdrawn. “To be spoiled like a merchant” 
was a mediaeval proverb eloquently expressive of conditions in the 
time of its origin. On the sea shipping was no longer protected by 
Rome’s fleets of war galleys, and pirates, Gothic, Vandal, Slav, 
Saracenic, and Norse, during successive centuries, practically 
drove ships of commerce from the western Mediterranean. 

There was no longer any coinage, of course, nor any other 
medium of exchange which had more than a merely local valid¬ 
ity. The silver coins of Charlemagne brought a momentary 
improvement in this situation, but the first coins to enjoy a 
European-wide acceptance were minted in Florence in 1252, 
some eight centuries after the fall of Rome. Further, trade was 
greatly hindered by the excessive tolls and market dues levied 
by the local magnates. The local leaders into whose hands 
political authority had gradually passed were great landed 
proprietors, for the most part, and they took a farmer’s attitude 
toward industry and trade. They could not see beyond their 
own boundaries. “Economic localism ” characterized mediaeval 
life through long centuries, displacing the “world economy” 
that had characterized the Roman Empire. 

In the decline of town life, as in its revival, it will be well to 
distinguish between Italy and the north of Europe. City life 
never ceased in Italy. It has been continuous there from the 
days of early Rome to the present. Even in the period when 
communication between western Europe and the East had 
practically ceased the cities of Italy kept up their local indus¬ 
tries and maintained a substantial inter-municipal trade. The 
Italian city life had been too vigorous, the urban centers too 
large, for the invaders, numerous and varied as they were, to 
convert the city dwellers to the peasants’ way of life. The 
feudal land system never had the vogue in Italy that it enjoyed 
north of the Alps. Freemen were more numerous in proportion 
to serfs in Italy, also, than elsewhere in western Europe. 

In Gaul city life was brought to an abrupt close by the rise 
of Mohammedanism. The Roman towns of Gaul, especially 
numerous and important in the south, had survived the period 
of invasions; indeed, much of Roman civilization survived. 
The Merovingian kings of the Franks maintained and em- 


326 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


ployed the old Roman financial and administrative system. 
The city of Marseilles kept up an active trade with Constanti¬ 
nople, Egypt, and Syria to the middle of the eighth century. 
The rise of the Moslems stopped this. By 750 a.d., just as 
the Carolingians were displacing the Merovingians, the Mos¬ 
lems had completed their conquest of the western Mediterra¬ 
nean and western Europe was cut off from the East. The pro¬ 
fessional merchant class disappeared north of the Alps. Towns 
became merely the strongholds of the local magnates, with per¬ 
haps a weekly market for the interchange of the peasant produce 
of the neighborhood. For two hundred years Marseilles, a thriv¬ 
ing port since the time of the Greeks, disappeared from history. 
Roman Spain, of course, became a part of the economic empire 
of the Moslems. In Britain town life completely disappeared. 

The Revival of Trade 

Town life revived in western Europe when trade revived, 
and trade revived when the West was able to renew its contact 
with the East. This came in the tenth century, through the 
Vikings in the north and the Venetians in the south. Through 
some generations Norse warrior-merchants had carried on trade 
in the North Sea and in the Baltic, booty garnered in their sum¬ 
mer raids to the south constituting the staple commodities. 
Meanwhile, they were making settlements in Russia, and were 
pushing their way southward through the lakes and along the 
rivers of central Russia. The climax came when they reached 
the Black Sea and thus established an all-water route through 
Russia to Constantinople and the East, the famous Varangian 
route. At the same time these Vikings were abandoning pillage 
and settling down as merchants. On the shore line of the Baltic 
and North seas, and on the rivers and inlets giving access 
to those waters, little clusters of merchants began to form and 
towns appeared. 

The merchants of Venice were in contact with the East as 
early as the seventh century. The rise of Mohammedan power 
never quite ended Venetian trade, though it greatly hindered 
it. At the same time that the Varangian route was being 
opened up the Venetians began to make headway in the east- 


REVIVAL OF TRADE; RISE OF TOWNS 327 

ern Mediterranean. In 1002 they defeated the Moslem pirates 
at Bari, thus clearing the Adriatic and gaining an unimpeded 
entrance to the eastern Mediterranean. More important still 
for the revival of western trade was the success of Genoa 
and Pisa in the western Mediterranean. As late as 1004 
and again in 1011 Pisa was sacked by Moslem pirates. The 
series of brilliant exploits by which Italian and Norman sailors 
and soldiers cleared the western Mediterranean of Saracen 
pirates has been noted. The conquest of Sicily cleared the 
channel to the East and is perhaps the most important single 
event in the story of the rise of trade. By 1100 a.d., therefore, 
landways and seaways to the East were cleared. Then, for 
two centuries the Crusades brought tens of thousands of west¬ 
erners into personal contact with the East, with results for trade 
which have been noted. 

The Growth of Population 

The population of western Europe was growing, meanwhile, 
thus increasing Europe’s purchasing power. It has been esti¬ 
mated that the population of western Europe, after the fall of 
Rome, was 30,000,000. By the year 1300 it had doubled. This 
great growth was made possible by agricultural colonization, 
the clearing of forests, the draining of swamps, and the reclaim¬ 
ing of lands inundated by the sea, the patient work of humble 
folk little noted in history. The Low Countries, practically 
empty lands in the tenth century, had a population of some 
three millions by 1300. The rich agricultural region between 
the Rhine and the Moselle saw its population increase tenfold 
in the same period. That Italy had advanced far toward full 
economic recovery and even prosperity is shown by her ten 
million inhabitants in 1300. France had twice as many, her 
twenty or twenty-two millions in 1300 practically equaling her 
eighteenth century total. Little England, with but 1,200,000 
at the Norman Conquest, gained a full million during the next 
two centuries. This doubling of western Europe’s population, 
even if it remained largely or wholly agricultural, is a factor of 
great moment in accounting for the revival of trade and the 
growth of towns. 















































330 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


The Revival of Italian Cities 

The Italian city-state, the French commune, the German 
stadt, and the English borough were all produced by causes 
essentially similar. However, towns did not sprout in the soil 
of Europe everywhere at the same time. Conditions in Italy 
were so much more favorable for the growth of cities than was 
the case north of the Alps that it will be well to consider the 
two regions separately. 

The cities of southern Italy and Sicily may be quickly passed 
over. Amalfi had a brief period of great prosperity, a fact which 
astonishes the tourist to-day, and Palermo remained an impor¬ 
tant city throughout the middle ages. Southern Italy and Sicily, 
however, were not on the main highway of mediaeval commerce. 
Furthermore, the strong government of the Norman conquerors 
arrested the growth of self-governing institutions in the south¬ 
ern cities at an early stage. 

It was in northern Italy and particularly on the Lombard plain 
that Italian cities attained the greatest development in size, 
in wealth, in culture, and in self-governing authority. To under¬ 
stand this we must grasp a simple fact, namely, that the great 
west-east trade of the middle ages flowed from northern Eu¬ 
rope through the Alpine passes into the plain of Lombardy 
and thence by water to the East, and back again. The Lombard 
merchants were thus the middlemen of the middle ages. From 
Constantinople and the Levant they brought spices, sugar, 
silk and cotton goods, rugs and tapestries, wine, and luxury 
articles of varied sorts. From the Black Sea came wheat and 
fish; \from Africa, gold, ivory, indigo, and lead. Italian indus¬ 
tries contributed the finer qualities of cloth, their principal 
manufacture. From northern Europe was brought, in exchange, 
cloth, raw wool, hides, and furs. 

Towns in the Lombard plain had been numerous in Roman 
days. When trade revived, with a large and increasing market 
in northern Europe, those towns showed the most rapid growth 
which were most favorably situated with reference to the flow 
of trade. Seaports in close contact with important Alpine 
passes, such as Venice, Genoa, and Pisa; towns located at an 


REVIVAL OF TRADE; RISE OF TOWNS 


331 


important ford of the Po, like Cremona; halting places on an¬ 
cient Roman roads, like Bologna and Siena; and towns situ¬ 
ated at the mouth of a pass, like Verona—such towns became 
important cities. 

North Italian cities grew greatly during the period of the 
Crusades. To the expansion of trade which ensued was added 
the more immediate enterprise of transporting, provisioning, 
and financing the crusaders, through two centuries. Merchants 
and bankers took the fullest advantage of the business oppor¬ 
tunities thus afforded. From the beginning the Italians took a 
business man’s view of the Crusades. “ Philanthrophy plus 
five per cent ” is the modern equivalent of their attitude. Such 
was the growth of population that many of the Italian cities 
were compelled to build new walls in the twelfth century,— 
Piacenza, in 1158, Florence, in 1172-1174, Modena, in 1188, 
and Padua, in 1195. 


Milan 

The growth of Milan was especially rapid. Her position was 
central in the Lombard plain where trade routes crossed; in 
modern parlance, Milan was a great “railway center.” She 
was the center, also, of a rich agricultural region, the largest 
in Italy. 1 Her population in 1200 a.d. was estimated at 300,- 
000, which would make her the largest city in western Europe. 
Milan’s natural advantages have proved to be deeply rooted 
for she has kept her leadership among Italian cities to the pres¬ 
ent day. 


Venice 

Flanking Milan on either side were the great seaports of 
Venice and Genoa. Venice, the “Queen of the Adriatic ”, had 
natural advantages which were unique. The lagoons gave her 
security. Lagoons are no-man’s land, shallow water at high 
tide and mud flats at low, land in the making. The rivers of 
the Lombard plain, Tagliamento, Piave, Adige, and Po, come 
down rapidly from the foothills of the Alps carrying great quan- 

1 Milan had been an important city under the Roman Empire, famous 
for her industries. 


332 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


tities of detritus in their swiftly flowing currents. Even now, 
in these “tamer geologic times ”, bridges are washed out by 
these streams and levees broken through. As the waters reach 
the plain their pace slackens little by little. Near the Adriatic 
the flow of an Alpine torrent has slowed to that of a sluggish 
stream having a fall of as little as a quarter of an inch in a mile. 
Gravel, sand, and sediment settle to the bottom more and more 
completely. In this way the Lombard plain itself has been 
made, and so is it being made to-day, for the shore line of the 
Adriatic advances at the rate of about fifteen feet a year. Ra¬ 
venna, an important port in the days of Rome, finds herself 
six miles inland now. 

To refugees from dry land hardy enough or desperate enough 
to fix their dwellings in a lagoon the security from the land side 
was almost absolute. On the sea side, also, they found security, 
for there nature supplied a rampart of sand dunes, called lidi. 
These are partly the work of the prevailing winds, blowing in¬ 
shore, and partly the work of a current of the Adriatic which 
flows southward along the westerly shore. In front of the la¬ 
goons where the first Venetians settled stretched a line of sand 
dunes fifty miles long, with hardly a break. Sand dune and la¬ 
goon, then, spelled security for Venice, the only considerable 
town of mediaeval Europe which had no walls. 

Nor is the tale of nature’s work for the Venetians yet com¬ 
plete. The aforementioned current, as it moves northward from 
the mouth of the Adriatic, sets toward the eastern shore, shel¬ 
tering itself behind a fringe of islands. Reaching the head of 
the Adriatic the current turns slowly westward and southward, 
washing the doorstep of Venice. Thus Venetian galleys could 
go with the current whether inward or outward bound. Early 
in contact with Constantinople and the Levant, never quite 
cut off by the rise of the Moslem power, Venetian merchants 
entered the period of trade revival with a long lead on their 
Italian rivals. 

May 23, 413 a.d., is the traditional date of the founding of 
Venice, when refugees from the mainland sought security from 
the Huns. A cluster of villages grew up on the marshy islands 
of the lagoons. In the eighth century the villages united into a 


REVIVAL OF TRADE; RISE OF TOWNS 


333 


confederation under a single elective leader called dux or doge. 
About the same time Venetian merchants succeeded in bringing 
home from Alexandria the bones of St. Mark, who became 
thenceforth the patron saint of the city and the protector of her 
commerce. Venetian merchants joined with the Eastern Em¬ 
pire to clear the eastern Mediterranean of Saracen pirates, and 
Venice was rewarded with a valuable grant of trading privileges 
in Constantinople and in the Black Sea. Thus began (eighth 
century) the famous alliance between Venice and her “Old 
Ally ” upon which Venetian prosperity chiefly depended. Vene¬ 
tian merchants had a special aptitude for business, it would 
seem. They were cautious, practical, and efficient. “No mer¬ 
cantile state has ever pursued a more constant, a more deliber¬ 
ate, or a more prudent course of action.” The city gradually 
expanded until it covered 117 closely contiguous islands, con¬ 
nected by 378 bridges. The foundations of buildings were ex¬ 
pensively made of piles. So compactly built is Venice that 
one may traverse its entire area on foot in a day. The artistic 
taste of the wealthy citizenry expressed itself in churches and 
palaces, built in the Byzantine manner. Mediaeval Venice 
became “a city of compressed splendor”, the jewel-casket of 
western Europe. 

Genoa 

Venice’s great rival in the eastern trade was Genoa. Venetian 
leadership in the eastern Mediterranean was matched by that 
of Genoa in the west. Like Venice too, Genoa stood at the head 
of navigation of an inland sea (the Tyrrhenian). Like Venice, 
Genoa was in close touch with the principal northern trade 
routes. Genoa was the principal port for goods destined to be 
borne overland along the Roman road through Pavia, and 
thence through the western passes of the Alps. Security by land 
was afforded by the sheltering wall of the Apennines, which 
skirts the coast most narrowly along the Gulf of Genoa. With¬ 
out natural advantages as great as those of Venice and cut off 
from the East by the Moslems for some centuries, Genoa’s de¬ 
velopment was neither so early nor so great as that of her 
rival. The Crusades brought Genoa a lion’s share of the trade 


334 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


of the Latin Kingdom, of Syria, and of Egypt, but the fall of 
Jerusalem was a severe blow. In the recovery of the western 
Mediterranean, however, and in the economic development of 
northern Europe, Genoa was a leader. Her relationships came 
to be more and more with the south of France and with Spain. 
When a new route to the East was sought in the West it is not 
surprising that Genoese sailors took the lead. To-day Genoa is 
still a thriving seaport while Venice is a tourist town chiefly, 
living on her past. 


Florence 

To Milan, Venice, and Genoa, the “big three ” of commerce 
in northern Italy, should be added Florence. Her position, 
both geographical and economic, was unique. She was neither 
a seaport nor the center of a rich agricultural region, nor was 
she especially well situated with reference to trade routes. The 
Florentines were manufacturers rather than merchants, their 
specialty being the making of cloth, an article of universal de¬ 
mand in Europe. The neighboring hills of Tuscany were well 
adapted to sheep-raising. Wool was imported also, from Sar¬ 
dinia, from Castile, from the south of France, and even from 
England. Moreover, many of the Florentine weavers special¬ 
ized in the finer grades of cloth, importing rough, unfinished 
cloth from Flanders and elsewhere and working it over. Floren¬ 
tines were especially famous for their dyes, known in the middle 
ages as “Florentine colors ” and remarkable for fastness and 
beauty. The population of the city, 45,000 in 1281, doubled 
in the next fifty years. Some 30,000 workers were employed 
in the textile industry, the total annual output of which was 
valued at 200,000 gold florins. As capital accumulated the 
Florentines became bankers, thus establishing a second great 
“industry”. The foundations of the great Florentine banking 
houses of the later middle ages were laid in the thirteenth cen¬ 
tury. 

Self-Government in the Cities of Northern Italy 

The cities of northern Italy were not only the largest and 
wealthiest of Europe; they were also the most completely self- 


REVIVAL OF TRADE; RISE OF TOWNS 


335 


governing. Matchless as were their economic advantages, 
their political advantages were just as great. Under the Roman 
Empire the cities of Italy had exercised some powers of local 
self-government, but there was much regulation and super¬ 
vision by the central authority. The fall of Rome brought no 
special change in this respect for the place of the emperor in the 
scheme was taken by East Gothic king, eastern emperor, Lom¬ 
bard king, and Frankish emperor in turn. 

In the century of anarchy following the break-up of Charle¬ 
magne’s empire, however, the Lombard cities were thrown upon 
their own resources. Central control disappeared. Further¬ 
more, these cities became places of refuge for the populace of 
the countryside, fleeing from Slavs, Magyars, Northmen, and 
Saracens. It is significant that the ninth century was a period 
of wall-building among the Lombard towns. North of the Alps, 
it will be remembered, it was an age of castle-building, and the 
local center of refuge was a great landlord, not a walled city. 
In the work of organizing for self-defense and self-government 
the leader in a Lombard city was usually the local bishop. The 
boundaries of city and diocese were usually the same. The 
cathedral was the civic center. Even in Roman times urban 
bishops had been entrusted by the government with adminis¬ 
trative work. Under the leadership of their bishops, then, 
Italian cities took their first steps along the path of self-govern¬ 
ment. 

In the course of the eleventh century, however, a new type 
of city government appeared. It may be called the “consular 
constitution ”, or government by consuls. Becoming general 
among the Lombard cities about 1100 a.d., consular govern¬ 
ment lasted about a century. It was inevitable that, as pros¬ 
perity came, keen and successful merchants would question 
the continued dominance of the city’s life by the bishop. Inter¬ 
city competition was fierce and unrestrained. A business man’s 
government was called for, and the “commune” appeared. 

A commune has been defined as “the organized will of the 
free inhabitants of a city.” Under the consular constitution 
there was an executive of consuls, from two to twenty in num¬ 
ber. Then there was an elective council, made up of wealthy 


336 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


business men and local nobles, whose functions were to advise 
the consuls and to supervise their work. Finally, there was a 
parliament ( arengo ) of all the citizens, a primary assembly 
which elected the consuls and the council and voted “yes ” or 
“no ” on major questions submitted to it. In mediaeval cities 
only a few of the inhabitants were “citizens.” A citizen was a 
specially privileged inhabitant and citizenship was a highly 
prized distinction. As a citizen you were entitled to vote, and 
you enjoyed special legal and financial privileges. Usually only 
members of certain gilds could become citizens. Most of the 
population had no share whatever in the government, espe¬ 
cially in the earlier days of the Lombard communes. Later 
on this exclusion of the masses had grave political consequences, 
which we shall have occasion to notice. 

The Lombard communes were experimenting in the art of 
self-government. The outline of the consular constitution just 
given has a general validity; but almost every conceivable 
variant was tried, here or there, sooner or later. Thompson 
enumerates “single and plural executive, direct and indirect 
election, electoral qualifications and universal suffrage, class 
representation, proportional representation, long term and 
short term in office, rotation in offices.” And he continues, 
“The composition of town councils ran the gamut from ex¬ 
treme aristocratic domination of the rich (< otiosi ) to ineligibility 
or disenfranchisement or even exile of the upper classes and 
complete domination by the masses.” 1 

Whatever local form the communal government might take, 
every Lombard city was alike in claiming for itself full sover¬ 
eignty. By 1200 a.d. the territory of northern Italy was com¬ 
pletely parceled out among the Lombard communes. All the 
powers and rights formerly exercised by the central authority 
were being exercised by the communes. The right of coinage, 
the enforcement of justice, foreign policy, waging war and 
making peace, taxation of imports and exports, in a word, all 
the regalia , were now in local hands. Even so had the great 
landed barons seized the power of government north of the 
Alps. 

1 Op. cit., p. 783. 


REVIVAL OF TRADE; RISE OF TOWNS 


337 


As in the north of Europe so in Lombardy attempts were 
made by a centralizing authority to gain a measure of recogni¬ 
tion from the new communes. The German emperors of the 
tenth and eleventh centuries had always obtained a formal 
recognition of their overlordship from the Lombard cities. 
Then came the war of the investitures. The Lombard com¬ 
munes, as they rapidly increased in wealth and power, be¬ 
came less and less inclined to acknowledge the weakening 
authority of the German emperors. In 1154, however, there 
came to the throne of Germany and of the empire a remarkable 
man. This was Frederick Barbarossa (1154-1189). To him, 
prompted by his lawyer counselors, every prerogative of Justin¬ 
ian, of Constantine, or of Hadrian was his own. Frederick 
proposed to reestablish the authority of the Roman emperor 
in the Lombard communes. There ensued a famous contest 
the issues and results of which are so far-reaching that they 
must be dealt with in another chapter. 

Bitter Rivalry of the Italian Communes 

Bitterly as the communes of Lombardy hated the emperor, 
they hated each other more bitterly. War, and war of the most 
ruthless sort, went on among them ceaselessly. They fought 
for control of the trade routes; to exterminate a rival was their 
first thought and their last. Such had been the way of the city- 
states of ancient Greece. Milan, focus of many trade routes, 
waged war first and last on most of the cities of the Lombard 
plain. Her soldiers posted themselves on the highways at strate¬ 
gic points, compelling caravans to turn their course to Milan. 
Her particular rival was Pavia, through which a large volume 
of goods from northern Europe flowed to Genoa. Milan at 
length contrived the ruin of her rival by founding a new city, 
Alessandria (1168), on the road between Pavia and Genoa. 

A close neighbor and early rival of Genoa was Pisa. The 
growth of Pisa had been remarkable. She built her second wall 
in the eleventh century. The Crusades brought her unexampled 
prosperity in the twelfth. The ambitious citizens, full of civic 
pride, began to build a new civic center on the edge of town, 
confidently expecting to grow around it. A beautiful cathedral, 


338 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


a baptistery, and a campanile (the famous Leaning Tower) 
were erected, placing Pisa first among Italian cities in architec¬ 
tural magnificence. The animosity of Genoa was savage and 
deadly. Slowly cutting off Pisa’s trade and closing in upon 
her, she captured the city in 1284, carried off everything mov¬ 
able, and then built a mole athwart the mouth of the Arno, 
causing the harbor to fill with silt. Pisa never recovered. 

The greatest and most prolonged rivalry of all was that be¬ 
tween Genoa and Venice, each mistress of half the Mediter¬ 
ranean. This warfare killed the Crusades, as we have seen. It 
was the greatest factor in the commercial history of thirteenth- 
century Europe; and it continued, as we shall see, to the close 
of the middle ages. 

The Origin of Towns North of the Alps 

North of the Alps the rise of towns was late and slow. Nor 
did the northern towns, during the middle ages, ever equal 
those of Lombardy in population, wealth, or powers of self- 
government. Nevertheless, their story is one of unique interest. 
This arises from the fact that in the north town life had to be¬ 
gin all over again. 

Western Europe reestablished its contact with the East in 
the tenth and eleventh centuries, as we have seen. Oriental 
goods began to flow northward from Italy over Alpine passes, 
and Viking boats from the Baltic brought eastern commodities 
to the mouths of the Rhine and the Seine. We may distinguish 
two distinct elements of origin in northern towns. The first 
is represented in the suffix, - burg , - burgh , or - bourg , so frequently 
a part of the place name of towns in Flanders, Germany, France, 
and England. Feudal Europe was dotted with castles, as we 
have seen, the strongholds of the landed magnates, lay and 
clerical. These castles served as the military and administrative 
centers of the lands surrounding them. Strongly fortified and 
garrisoned, the feudal stronghold was known in mediaeval 
Latin as burgus, a word of Germanic origin. A little group of 
merchants making their way along a trade route, whether by 
land or by water, would come to a natural halting place, the 
mouth of a river, the confluence of two rivers, a ford, or a cross- 


REVIVAL OF TRADE; RISE OF TOWNS 


339 


roads. The number of such places is strictly limited. At such a 
place the merchants would seek the shelter of the nearest strong¬ 
hold or burgh. Within its walls they could unpack and market 
their wares. In the course of time permanent colonies of mer¬ 
chants would grow up in those strongholds most favorably 
located for trade. 

But soon the “cluster of merchants ” settled within a strong¬ 
hold would grow too large to be accommodated within its walls. 
The merchants would proceed to establish themselves in a 
closely adjacent but exterior burgh. In this forisburgus, or 
suburbium, we have the second element in the origin of northern 
towns. 1 Thus we have as the two elements of the northern 
town a stronghold and a business center. As time went on the 
strongholds ceased to develop, while the business centers grew 
out of all knowledge of their origin. The merchants began to 
organize for the control of trade routes and markets and for the 
exercise of self-government. Before we follow these develop¬ 
ments, however, we may ask what areas were the most favor¬ 
able for the growth of cities. 

Flemish Cities 

The “Lombardy” of northern Europe was Flanders. Here 
the waterways of the north and west of Europe converge. The 
cities of Flanders were the great middlemen of the north, where 
land-borne and water-borne commodities were interchanged. 
The coastline of Flanders is deeply indented and sheltering. 
Lidge, Ghent, Cambrai, Bruges, Valenciennes, and many other 
cities were all within easy reach of the sea by water, yet not so 
near as to be constantly exposed to attack. The Flemish Hanse, 
or gild of merchants, included fifty-six towns in the second 
half of the twelfth century. The development of this Hanse 
was due not so much to trade, however, as to industry. The 
manufacture of textiles sprang up in the Flemish towns. Raw 
wool was imported from England, where the demand for wool 
caused many landlords to turn their manors into sheep-runs. 
The towns of Flanders developed special weaves of their own. 

1 In French the fausburgus becomes faubourg. In English it is represented 
by the suffix “-port”, so often seen as a part of the place names of modern 
citie3. (From portus, mediaeval Latin for wharf or warehouse.) * 


340 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Lisle comes from Lille; cambric, from Cambrai. Arras and Valen¬ 
ciennes have also given their names to well-known products of the 
weaver’s art. By the end of the twelfth century Bruges, Ghent, 
Lille, Douai, and Ypres had a population of some 50,000 each. 

Cities of the South of France 

Second in importance to the Flemish, among the cities of 
northern Europe, were those of Languedoc, in the south of 
France. The heart of this region was the County of Toulouse. 
The principal Mediterranean ports of Languedoc, Marseilles, 
Montpellier, and Narbonne, revived with the recovery of the 
western Mediterranean. During the Crusades the volume of 
east-west trade increased so prodigiously that the Italian cities 
could not handle it all. It overflowed to the ports of Languedoc, 
and Marseilles, Montpellier, and Narbonne prospered only less 
than Venice, Genoa, and Pisa. It should be recalled, also, that 
most of the crusaders were French and so the ports of southern 
France were busied with the transportation of men and sup¬ 
plies to the Holy Lands. 

Industry flourished in Languedoc as well as trade. As a tex¬ 
tile center Languedoc was next to Flanders in importance. The 
semi-arid hills of the Cevennes and the slopes of the Pyrenees 
furnished pasture for millions of sheep, whose wool fed the 
looms of Toulouse, Albi, Montauban, Nimes, and other towns 
of Languedoc. Albi was the center of the wool manufacturing 
industry then as now. Much of the cloth of Languedoc was 
exported to the Orient. Vine growing was the most important 
agricultural industry. Probably two-thirds of Languedoc is 
not well suited to agriculture, but the remaining third includes 
some of the most fertile lands in western Europe. Vine culture 
had secured a virtual monopoly of these fertile lands before 
the close of the middle ages. All in all, Languedoc, at the close 
of the twelfth century, was probably the most prosperous region 
of Europe, not excepting Lombardy and Flanders. 

Other Northern Cities 

We may deal with other cities of northern Europe more 
briefly. • Trade and industry spread from Flanders up the Rhine 


REVIVAL OF TRADE; RISE OF TOWNS 


341 


valley. Cologne, Mainz, Worms, Speyer, Strassbourg, Basel, 
Trier, and Metz developed into thriving towns, though they 
were not nearly so large as the Flemish cities. The great ma¬ 
jority of German towns had less than 5000 inhabitants each 
even at the close of the mediaeval period. In north Germany, 
along the North Sea and the Baltic, were the important towns 
of Hamburg, Liibeck, Bremen, and Stettin. From six to twelve 
thousand would be a generous estimate of their size in the 
twelfth century. These Baltic cities were very prosperous in 
the later middle ages, as members of the famous Hanseatic 
League. In France, river towns like Paris and Rouen, on the 
Seine, and Orleans and Tours, on the Loire, had a more than 
local importance. The four Fair Towns of Champagne, Troyes, 
Provins, Lagny, and Bar-sur-Aube, gained a considerable im¬ 
portance during the eleventh and twelfth centuries as “half¬ 
way-houses ” for the overland trade between Lombardy and 
Flanders. This advantage was lost when, in 1317 and thereafter, 
Venetian galleys ventured through the Straits of Gibraltar and 
established a water route to Flanders. London, located at the 
point where the Thames may first be forded, had a population 
of twenty to twenty-five thousand by the end of the twelfth 
century. Probably no other town in England had a population 
one quarter as large. 

Self-Government in the Northern Cities 

Municipal self-government north of the Alps differed from 
that in Italy both in origin and in development. Feudalism 
was strongly entrenched in the north; indeed, it had reached 
its height before the revival of trade began. The merchants 
and craftsmen of a northern town were the subjects of the lord 
of the neighboring stronghold, who judged, taxed, and com¬ 
manded his subjects according to his pleasure. Feudal law and 
customs, the outgrowth of an agricultural society, failed to 
meet the need of townsmen, however. To the business man the 
judicial oaths, ordeals, and duels, and the leisureliness and cere¬ 
moniousness of feudal courts, were a nuisance. Further, the 
townsmen had community interests such as cornering markets 
and controlling trade routes of which their lords had, in general, 


342 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


little appreciation. This was especially true of the ecclesiastical 
lords of towns, the archbishops, bishops, and abbots. A desire 
for profits might readily turn to usury, in their opinion, and 
was usually tinged with avarice. A mediaeval savings account 
should be souls, not dollars. 

It was, then, a fundamental divergence of interest between 
northern lords and northern townsmen which led to the organi¬ 
sation of communes. The northern communes did not ask that 
the feudal system be abolished for their benefit; in that age such 
a thought was literally unthinkable. An association of towns¬ 
men demanded that it be recognized as a feudal person, an “ in¬ 
corporated baron ”, so to speak. As such it would be capable 
of doing homage and service to a lord and of holding vassals. 
It would have the right to do justice in its own courts and to 
tax and to command its own subjects. Each commune would 
be “a collective seigneurie”. 

In the second half of the eleventh century the organisation 
of communes in northern Europe went forward rapidly. Associ¬ 
ations of townsmen drew up charters in which certain demands 
or “liberties ” were set forth in detail. Some of the early char¬ 
ters were accepted as models and widely copied. Armed 
conflict between townsmen and lords was the rule, at first, 
particularly in the ecclesiastical fiefs. As time went on, 
however, and the movement was better understood by the 
barons, townsmen were able to buy the liberties they wanted 
for a lump sum. 

We should note that the development of the northern com¬ 
munes reached an advanced stage, comparable with that of the 
Lombard cities, only in Germany. There feudal control grew 
progressively weaker as the mediaeval period advanced, and the 
German towns became practically sovereign and independent 
republics, completely controlling their own affairs and the af¬ 
fairs of their citizens. In England and in France the growth in 
authority of the central government set bounds to the power 
of the communes. In Flanders the counts, by sympathetic co¬ 
operation with the business interests of the cities and by cleverly 
playing one city against another, were able to maintain a fair 
measure of control over the communes. 


REVIVAL OF TRADE; RISE OF TOWNS 


343 


The Third Estate 

Collectively the townsmen constituted a new social class, 
le tiers etat , as characteristic of mediaeval society and as valid a 
part of it as the clergy and nobility. Thus began the middle 
class, still the backbone of European and American society. 
As mediaeval towns prospered the wealthier townsmen became 
socially pretentious, building palatial residences for themselves, 
intermarrying with the landed nobility, and even, as in the 
south of France, calling themselves barons. Finally the towns¬ 
men demanded political recognition in the nation; and they 
obtained it, sending their representatives to sit with the bishops, 
abbots, and barons, in the councils of the state. The feudal 
Great Council thus became the Estates-General in France, 
the Parliament in England, the Diet in Germany, and the 
Cortes in Spain. 


Mediaeval Shipping 

It will be well to learn something about transportation by 
land and sea during the period of the revival of trade and the 
rise of towns. The West had to build its own ships, since Byzan¬ 
tine merchants never troubled themselves to fare forth in search 
of markets. Venice led the way, copying Byzantine models and 
soon building ships as large as any then afloat. By the eleventh 
century Venetian shipbuilders had outstripped the East, build¬ 
ing ships bigger and better than any seen elsewhere in the Medi¬ 
terranean. Shipbuilding flourished at Venice ever more and more. 
The shipyards or “Arsenal” were owned by the city and gave 
employment to several thousand workers. A capacity of forty 
new galleys a year, exclusive of repairs, was attained in the 
fourteenth century. The largest Venetian galleys did not exceed 
500 or 600 tons, however. Other notable shipyards of the period 
were at Genoa, which was not far behind Venice in shipbuilding, 
at Marseilles, and at Barcelona. Of all mediaeval industries 
that of shipbuilding developed most completely along modern 
lines. 

The art of navigation was very primitive at first, for the West 
had forgotten what the Romans knew. Gradually, however, 


344 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Italian sailors recovered this lost knowledge and even improved 
upon it. The use of the compass was borrowed from the Arabs; 
and it occurred to the sailors of Sicily to put the magnetic needle 
on a pivot. Italian sailors began to draw up sea charts, thus 
making generally useful the fund of knowledge of coastlines, 
reefs, and shoals which mariners were accumulating. Old Roman 
lighthouses were rebuilt and additional ones located. Each of 
the leading western ports maintained a fleet of war galleys to 
patrol the sea lanes and to convoy its fleets of merchant ships. 

Medieval Roads and Bridges 

Transportation by land can offer no such record of advance 
in the middle ages. Roads were worse in the sixteenth century 
than in the twelfth. A moment’s reflection will reveal why this 
was so. Rome’s magnificent roads, covering like a vast network 
all her far-stretching provinces, were built and maintained by 
the central government. With Rome’s fall no successor to such 
centralized power appeared; indeed, none has yet appeared, 
and Europe’s motor roads are in need of a coordinating author¬ 
ity to-day. The feudal barons took up the task of maintaining 
the roads of Europe through the labor service of their serfs. 
The concern and indeed the authority of a baron vanished at 
his own frontier, however, and while the interest in road-mend¬ 
ing of some barons might be keen, that of other barons was 
negligible. Furthermore, as time went on and emancipation 
of the serfs began, the barons lost their power to compel work 
on the roads. The central government, even in countries where 
one was developed fairly early, as in England and France, did 
not regard road-making and -mending as its job. Upkeep of 
the roads had been a local concern for so long that it was many 
generations before the national governments saw the necessity 
of taking it over. 

Travel over mediaeval roads, whether of merchant or courier, 
was at a snail’s pace as compared with modern speed. Probably 
eighteen miles a day would be considered good going in those 
days; indeed, this was not bettered for some centuries after 
the mediaeval period. From Rome to Canterbury took seven 
weeks, the journey being overland to the English Channel. To 


REVIVAL OF TRADE; RISE OF TOWNS 


345 


go from Florence to Champagne the couriers of the Florentine 
banks took twenty to twenty-five days. The news of the drown¬ 
ing of Frederick Barbarossa in a mountain torrent of Asia Minor 
reached Germany four months later. The Moslems conquered 
Persia in 635 a.d., but the conquest is recorded in Chinese 
annals as of the year 643. 

The rule of the road, in the middle ages, was to pass on the 
left. Nearly every one traveled armed, and since every person 
encountered was a possible enemy, it was essential that the 
wayfarer be on his guard and have his weapons ready for in¬ 
stant use. A change to passing on the right was the result of 
the general use of firearms. A man who carries a musket will 
let it rest in the hollow of his left arm, or cup the barrel in his 
left hand, when scenting danger. Conservative England alone of 
European countries still observes the mediaeval rule of the road. 

The story of mediaeval bridges is like the story of mediaeval 
roads. Bridges were thought of as a local problem. The main¬ 
tenance of bridges was a more pressing problem than was the 
upkeep of roads, however, for the reason that while a road 
would still be passable at certain seasons even after a long 
period of neglect, a bridge would fall in ruins. Moreover, bridges 
were few and far between, so that a broken bridge meant a long, 
toilsome, and possibly dangerous detour. Mediaeval bridge- 
builders therefore sought to enlist for the preservation of their 
work the most powerful motive in mediaeval life, namely, re¬ 
ligion. Bridges were dedicated to the Virgin or the Saints. An 
appropriate shrine was erected at the bridgehead or on one of 
the central piers. Here mediaeval travelers were accustomed 
to give thanks for a safe crossing and to leave an offering. 

Of course the pious offerings were often supplemented by a 
toll charge. When mediaeval folk made their wills they gener¬ 
ally left something to the local bridge, for the love of God and 
the good of their souls. It was esteemed a deed of charity to 
help, thus, the harassed travelers of the time. An additional 
source of revenue, in the case of a bridge in or near a city, was 
the shops built upon the bridge itself, lining the roadway on 
either side. Mediaeval traffic converged upon the few bridges, 
so that the bridge-shops must have done a thriving business. 


346 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


London Bridge was famous for its shops. This most famous of 
English bridges became a national institution and collectors circu¬ 
lated throughout the country gathering gifts for its maintenance. 

City Walls 

The most obvious external feature of a mediaeval town, al¬ 
ways, was its wall. Security in an age when private war was 
the custom of the country was nature’s first law. Doubtless 
the first tax ever levied by the confederated citizens of a town 
was for the building or upkeep of the wall. In Liege to this day 
the word used for “tax ” is fermete, which means “wall”. The 
matter of defense including the upkeep of the wall, the build¬ 
ing of war engines, the providing of arms for the citizens, and 
the provision of watch and ward, made up about eight-tenths 
of a mediaeval city budget. The wall had to be made thick 
enough and high enough to afford a sense of security, if not 
absolute security, to the townsmen who dwelt within its en¬ 
circling shelter. Some city walls were wide enough to drive a 
team and wagon along the top. The site of such a wall, when 
cleared in recent times, becomes a wide boulevard of great con¬ 
venience to traffic. Great towers were built at the corners of the 
wall and over the gates. Strongly built, with a heavy overhang, 
these towers were citadels in themselves. In quiet times the 
lower stories of the towers were used as stables, granaries, and 
storehouses. Even the moat might be divided into garden plots 
during halcyon days of peace. 

The wall not only fixed the limits of a city for generations 
at a time but it also profoundly influenced conditions of life 
inside the city. Space was at a premium and great congestion 
was the rule. City streets were very narrow and sidewalks were 
lacking. Traffic was obstructed by fountains, shrines, and goods 
offered for sale. To avoid complete obstruction the ordinances 
of some towns provided that a horseman should ride the length 
of all streets once a year with a lance held across his saddle in 
front of him. All interfering obstructions must come down. 
To meet the ever-increasing demand for space, buildings were 
pushed into the air to a height of five or six stories, or more. 
This practice eventually led to the enactment of “skyscraper ” 


REVIVAL OF TRADE; RISE OF TOWNS 


347 


ordinances, in which a certain maximum height was specified. 
At Rheims the eaves of the cathedral were taken as the standard 
of height. “It is recorded that whenever a building was going 
up the archdeacon was enjoined to look out daily from the port¬ 
holes in the eaves and see that the walls of no structure rose 
higher than the level of his eyes.” 1 

The Health of City Dwellers 

On the whole, congestion of population in mediaeval cities, 
despite their small size, was fully as great as in modern cities. 
This was due mainly to the confining effect of the wall and to 
the heavy, the almost prohibitive, expense of building a second 
and outer wall. Congestion affected the population adversely 
in many ways. The wealthy merchants usually bought up most 
of the building lots in the city early in its development. As pop¬ 
ulation increased rents went up and overcrowding resulted. 
This, with other factors to be explored later, created the prob¬ 
lem of the proletariat, the underpaid, miserably housed masses, 
the continued existence of which is the real “shame of the 
cities ”, modern as well as mediaeval. 

The effect of congestion on public health was also adverse. 
Buildings fronting on the narrow streets were usually built with 
a heavy overhang to provide further floor space in the upper 
stories, thus shutting out light and air from the street pretty 
effectually. When we note that most of these darkened pas¬ 
sageways were unpaved and that the householders on both 
sides used them as common sewers their filth is more easily 
imagined than described. With our present knowledge of how 
typhoid and other infectious diseases spread under such condi¬ 
tions we may wonder why city dwellers of the middle ages did 
not all die like flies. For one thing, they were a hardier lot than 
modern urbanites. Mediaeval towns were commonly surrounded 
by farms and market gardens cultivated by the townsmen 
themselves. Then, too, mediaeval townfolk were within a short 
walk of a city gate, where open country stretched before them 
on every hand. The masses of our modern cities cannot so 
easily escape from the wilting heat and stifling air of the city. 

1 Thompson, op . cit ., p. 785. 


348 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Gilds of Merchants and of Craftsmen 

We must now turn to what was “the most interesting and 
most original creation of bourgeois civilization in the middle 
ages ”, namely, the gild. This institution was the mediaeval 
business man’s solution of the problem of labor and capital. 
There were gilds of two sorts, gilds of merchants and gilds of 
craftsmen. The merchant gilds were the older. In the early 
days merchants usually traveled in companies, organized and 
under discipline for greater security. “Confrerie”, “hanse ”, 
and “gild ” are contemporary names for such groups. Then 
as organized groups of merchants settled at favored trading 
points they sought to control the import and export trade of 
the town that grew up around them. When the wall was built 
and when the charter of self-government was won, it was the 
gild merchant of the town that took the lead and supplied most 
of the funds. Membership in a gild merchant was limited to 
the merchants of a particular town at first. This was only nat¬ 
ural, for mediaeval trade was inter-municipal, not international. 
Having cornered the import and export trade of a town, the 
gild merchant next set about establishing a standard quality 
for all goods and fixing a “just price.” The mediaeval concept 
of a “just price ” is very like our idea of the cost of production 
plus a certain percentage of profit. The better to maintain a 
standard of quality the merchant gilds encouraged the organi¬ 
sation of craft gilds. 

A chamber of commerce would seem to be the modern coun¬ 
terpart of the gild merchant, but the resemblance is not so close 
as it seems at first sight. For one thing, admittance to the gild 
merchant was more jealously guarded. So valuable was the 
membership privilege that mediaeval merchants sought to make 
it hereditary in their families. Again, the gild merchant exer¬ 
cised a benevolent oversight over all its members and their 
families, providing for the illnesses of the living and for the de¬ 
pendents of the dead. Like all mediaeval associations, the gild 
merchant had a religious aspect, also, fostering the religious life 
of its own membership and of the community in various ways. 
Many gilds of merchants still survive in London, such as the 


REVIVAL OF TRADE; RISE OF TOWNS 


349 


Mercers, the Grocers, the Drapers, the Fishmongers, the Mer¬ 
chant Taylors, and others. Their monopoly of trade broke 
down long ago, but they live on as large property owners, ex¬ 
pending their surplus income on educational and charitable 
enterprises. 

Craft gilds developed later than merchant gilds and were, 
so to speak, an offshoot of them. When a stream of merchandise 
began to flow along the trade routes and through the towns of 
Europe some of the enterprising townsmen set to work to sup¬ 
ply the market with products made at home. The early crafts¬ 
man had to make his own tools, first of all, and he usually set 
up his workshop in his own home. As helpers he employed his 
own boys and the boys of the neighborhood. As these helpers 
learned the craft and grew to manhood they set up shops of 
their own. Thus, in time, there came to be a number of crafts¬ 
men in each of a number of trades, such as cobblers, tinsmiths, 
weavers, tanners, and so on. Organisation of craftsmen into 
gilds followed naturally. Each craft gild had two fundamen¬ 
tal objectives. First, it must find and keep a market for its 
products. To keep its customers it was essential that all the 
products of the gild must be up to standard, “all wool and a 
yard wide ”, so to speak. Secondly, the gild must prevent over¬ 
production. To this end it was essential that the number of 
craftsmen be limited. Out of these two necessities the appren¬ 
tice system was born. 

Under the apprentice system a gild was made up of a cer¬ 
tain number of “masters”, each of whom owned his shop and 
tools. Each master was allowed to take a certain number of 
boys into his shop as apprentices. These boys were bound to 
work for the master a certain number of years, or until they 
had learned the trade. The term of years varied from three to 
eleven, according to the difficulty of the trade. While working 
for their master the apprentices lived in the master’s home and 
were subject to his authority. Boys who behaved badly might 
be dismissed by their master, and thus lose their chance of en¬ 
tering a skilled occupation. Pains were taken to ensure that 
only boys of good family were received as apprentices; illegiti¬ 
mate birth was a disqualification in some towns. The appren- 


350 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


tice had certain rights, too, which must be respected. The 
mistress of the house was not to make a menial out of him, 
compelling him to “wash the dishes and tend the baby.” 

When his time was up the apprentice applied for admission 
to the gild. The gild wardens sought to satisfy themselves on 
two points, first, the candidate’s skill, and secondly, his integ¬ 
rity. By insisting on these two points it was hoped that the 
quality of the gild’s product might be kept high. In some crafts 
and during some periods of the middle ages the candidate might 
be required to produce a “masterpiece ”. For example, a shoe¬ 
maker might be required to make a pair of shoes which would 
pass the rigid inspection of the examiners. Satisfied as to the 
candidate’s fitness, the gild wardens would give him a “license 
to practice”. By this time the young workman would be in his 
early twenties. There followed a brief period during which the 
new “bachelor ” plied his trade for wages, putting by his savings 
against the day when he would have a shop of his own. During 
his days as a wage earner the young “journeyman ” might make 
his way to neighboring towns, or even to distant lands, picking 
up new ideas. Not until he set up a shop of his own, however, 
did the “journeyman” become a “master” and thus a full- 
fledged member of his gild. 

To limit output, gilds fixed the number of apprentices a mas¬ 
ter might take and limited hours of work. Night work was usu¬ 
ally forbidden. For one thing, artificial light was invariably 
poor in those days and workmanship suffered in consequence. 
Then, too, it was deemed unfair for some to work at night and 
others not. 

Medieval and Modern Industry Compared 

It is often said that modern industry, with its excessive di¬ 
vision of labor and its extensive use of machinery, suffers in 
comparison with mediaeval industry, in which the artisan made 
the whole, or nearly the whole, of the product of his trade. The 
modern worker gets no mental enjoyment from his work, we 
are told. So finely subdivided, and thus so simplified, is the 
process of making a Ford car that ninety-five per cent of the 
Ford employees learn their jobs in a single day. Compare this 


REVIVAL OF TRADE; RISE OF TOWNS 


351 


with a mediaeval apprenticeship! Once he learns his simple job 
the modern factory hand tends to work mechanically. A girl 
in a chocolate factory stands all day with hands immersed in 
liquid chocolate watching an endless chain of “hand-dipped” 
peppermints pass under her eye as she swiftly makes little curli¬ 
cues on them. Dashing from the factory at the sound of the 
final whistle, she seeks relief and satisfaction in a brief whirl of 
excitement before the dull grind of another day begins. 

There is something in this, undoubtedly. The mediaeval arti¬ 
san, whether he made shoes or painted pictures, was “creating ” 
something. Man is a creator as well as a creature and always 
seeks to express himself in creative activity, beginning with 
mud pies. The contrast between modern and mediaeval indus¬ 
try is not as sharp as commonly supposed, however. Mediaeval 
industry early developed along division of labor lines. If we 
date the rise of craft gilds in the twelfth century, we may see 
what a remarkable differentiation and elaboration of gilds took 
place in the course of a single century. In Paris, in the middle 
of the thirteenth century, there were 101 different gilds. The 
major gilds had all developed minor gilds, subordinate to 
themselves. In the cloth trade were carders, fullers, and dyers, 
all dependent upon the weavers. Furthermore, each variety 
of cloth had its own separate gild of weavers. Masons were 
differentiated into stonecutters, mortar-mixers, and plasterers. 
The leather industry was divided among skinners, tanners, 
cobblers, shoemakers, saddlers, harness-workers, and others. 
The carpenters’ gild was subdivided almost as at present, with 
gilds of door-makers, cabinet-makers, boat-builders, wheel- 
makers, coopers, and so on. There was even a gild of old-clothes 
dealers. 

Rivalry betwen gilds kept up a merry fracas in mediaeval 
towns. The old-clothes gild fought with the tailors over the 
question of when clothes were no longer new. The old-clothes 
men also took to collecting old shoes and repairing them; this 
made difficulties for the cobblers. The cobblers began to make 
shoes as well as to repair them; this infringed upon the monopoly 
of the shoemakers. Cabinet-makers fitted their cabinets with 
locks; this brought energetic protest from the locksmiths. And 


352 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


so on. Gild regulations became more and more minute as gilds 
fought to defend the markets they had won. A clever artisan 
whose inventive skill fashioned a new tool or devised a new 
process usually had his labor for his pains; no change in the 
technique of manufacture would be allowed. As has been well 
said, the gild which had been a fortress became a prison. 

With all its limitations, however, it is difficult to see how 
the craft gild as a solution of mediaeval industrial problems 
could have been improved upon. It was a masterpiece in itself. 
It “ensured alike the economic independence of the producers 
and the interests of the consumers.” The very tenacity with 
which the gilds fought for survival in the face of economic revo¬ 
lution is an evidence of their vitality. It required the violent 
upheavals of the eighteenth century to destroy them. 

For Further Reading 

G. B. Adams, Civilization during the Middle Ages, chap. 12 
Cambridge Mediaeval History, V, chaps. 5 and 19; VI, chaps. 14 and 15 
J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 

chaps. 23 and 28 

A. Giry and A. Reville, Mediaeval Towns 

H. Pirenne, Mediaeval Cities 
-, Belgian Democracy 

William Cunningham, Growth of English Commerce and Industry, 
vol. I 

Mediaeval Towns. A series published by Dent. Each volume deals with 
a separate town 

C. R. Beazley, The Dawn of Modern Geography, II, chap. 6; III, 
chaps. 4 and 5 

E. Benson, Life in a Mediaeval City 

W. W. Carlile, Evolution of Modern Money 

L. F. Salzmann, English Industries of the Middle Ages (2d Ed.) 

C. Gross, The Gild Merchant 

A. P. Newton, and others, Travel and Travellers of the Middle Ages 
P. Villari, The First Two Centuries of Florentine History, 2 vols. 

H. F. Brown, Venice 



CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 


THE MEDIEVAL EMPIRE’S BRILLIANT FAILURE 

The Limited Authority of the Mediaeval Empire 

The Holy Roman Empire of the German people, or, more 
briefly, the Mediaeval Empire, was out of touch with the times 
from the beginning. Mediaeval society being what it was, the 
Roman ideal of political union could never be realized. In so 
far as mediaeval unity was ever achieved it was the work of the 
church, not of the empire. 

Successive German emperors had found it beyond their pow¬ 
ers even to unite Italy with Germany save for brief periods. 
There came to be three principal opponents of imperial author¬ 
ity in the Italian peninsula. The oldest and the greatest was 
the papacy. Master of Rome and central Italy, the pope could 
oppose the advance of a German king with a certain amount of 
physical force, if need be. The popes claimed the exclusive right 
of crowning the successive emperors and also of sitting in judg¬ 
ment upon their acts, and even of deposing them. All of these 
rights had been exercised on numerous occasions. A world of 
difference is here revealed between the actual authority of the 
mediaeval emperors and the power wielded by the rulers of Rome 
whose successors they assumed to be. In southern Italy and 
Sicily a compact, progressive, and powerful state had been built 
up by the Normans under leaders whose statesmanlike ability 
was second to none in western Europe. To the Norman kings of 
Naples and Sicily the authority of the German emperors meant 
nothing. The third factor in Italian politics was the Lombard 
communes. Rapidly growing in size and wealth, keenly alive 
to their own interests, the Lombard cities looked upon the im¬ 
perial authority as a curious archaism of no present or practical 
consequence. 


353 


354 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Frederick Barbarossa and his Concept of the Empire 

In 1152 there came to the German throne through election 
by his fellow barons Frederick, duke of Suabia and nephew of 
the preceding emperor Conrad III. Frederick Barbarossa, as 
he is called, was “the noblest embodiment of the mediaeval 
kingship, the most imposing, the most heroic, the most brilliant 
of the long line of German emperors.” He was thirty years old 
at his accession and he had a reign, remarkably long for those 
days, of nearly forty years (1152-1190). Frederick was already 
well known and highly respected. In the Second Crusade 
he stood out as the one leader who came back with an en¬ 
hanced reputation. A man of deep and sincere piety, who regu¬ 
larly gave a tithe of his income to charity, of blameless private 
life, loyal to his friends, generous and brave, Frederick had per¬ 
sonal qualities which were exceptional among the rulers of his 
age. 

The new king had an ideal of empire which he was eager to 
realize. The sources of his concept were partly Christian and 
partly Roman. To Frederick the authority of king and emperor 
was as divine as the authority of the pope. “The empire is held 
by us through the election of the princes from God above, who 
gave the world to be ruled by the two necessary swords, and 
taught through St. Peter that men should fear God and honor 
the king.” The empire, he continued, might even be called upon 
to compose disputes over the papal office. “Divine Providence 
has specially appointed the Roman Empire as a remedy against 
continual schism.” Here Frederick had precedent on his side, 
as we may recall from the reigns of Henry III and Otto I. 

The new king also regarded himself as the heir of the emperors 
of ancient Rome and successor to all their immense preroga¬ 
tives. The university of Bologna was then at the height of its 
fame in the teaching of Roman law. The Justinian Code was 
being studied there with scholarly zeal. Men learned in the 
law entered Frederick’s service. From them he learned what 
were the prerogatives of the emperors of old. From them, too, 
Frederick caught something of the spirit of Rome. Roman law 
was the law of a completely centralized despotism. The will of 


THE MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE’S FAILURE 


355 


the prince was law. The very lives and property of his subjects 
were at the emperor’s disposal. Frederick Barbarossa was a 
man of action, moreover. He set out to realize his ideals “with 
shrewd practical wisdom and businesslike command of de¬ 
tails.” He has been well called the Hildebrand of the Mediaeval 
Empire. 

In order to free his hands for action elsewhere, Frederick first 
secured his position in Germany. Fortune favored him. We 
have seen that two powerful combinations of barons had sprung 
up in Germany, the Guelfs and the Ghibbelines. The latter 
were also known as the Hohenstaufens, from an ancestral home 
in the Black Forest. Frederick Barbarossa was so fortunate as 
to combine the two families in himself, for his father had been 
a Ghibbeline and his mother a Guelf. He sought to strengthen 
the bond between the two factions. As head of the Ghibbe¬ 
lines he heaped favors upon Henry the Lion, who was chief of 
the Guelfs and Frederick’s cousin. Henry was allowed to be 
duke of both Bavaria and Saxony. He conducted himself like 
an independent sovereign, almost, marrying the daughter of 
Henry II of England and cooperating as an ally with the king 
of Denmark in a policy of expansion against the Slavs. Henry 
also made an alliance with the king of France. All of this brought 
no protest from King Frederick. He was content to give Henry 
a free hand in Germany so long as he did not place obstacles 
in the way of Frederick’s own “foreign” policy. 

Trouble Brewing in Italy 

Crossing the Alps into Lombardy, Frederick was crowned 
king at Pavia and there received the homage of the Lombard 
cities. Journeying southward to Rome Frederick was crowned 
emperor by the pope (1155). So far, so good. Already, however, 
awkward situations had arisen and ominous incidents had oc¬ 
curred. The pope was Hadrian IV, the only Englishman ever 
to hold the papal office. During a visit of ceremony it was in¬ 
timated to Frederick that he should hold the pope’s stirrup, thus 
assisting the Holy Father to dismount. This Frederick refused 
to do, and an open break was narrowly averted. 

A little later, after Frederick had left Rome, Hadrian IV 


356 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


sent him a message in which he referred to the many benefits 
( beneficia ) the emperor had received at his hands. The papal 
emissary, Roland, cardinal of St. Mark, boldly translated the 
word beneficia as “fiefs ”, which was its feudal meaning. So bit¬ 
terly did Frederick’s followers resent this that the greatly daring 
cardinal barely escaped with his life. Furthermore, Frederick 
had not troubled to put down a rising of the Roman mob under 
Arnold of Brescia, a severe critic of the church, nor to deliver 
the papacy from the menace of William the Bad, king of Naples 
and Sicily, whose army was threatening Rome. All this served 
to rouse mutual suspicions and to lay bare the essential antag¬ 
onisms of pope and emperor. On the death of Pope Hadrian in 
1159 the College of Cardinals chose as his successor, most signif¬ 
icantly, Cardinal Roland, who took the name of Alexander III 
(1159-1181). 

War between the Emperor and the Communes 

In the meantime the emperor was in Lombardy facing the 
problem of the Lombard communes. He found them warring 
with each other in their usual fashion. At the moment two 
leagues had developed, one led by Milan and the other by Pavia, 
both struggling for control of the trade routes of the Lombard 
plain. Pavia and her associates were disposed to favor imperial 
intervention, since they hoped it might mean that Milan’s 
predatory activity would be held in check. Milan, on the other 
hand, scented trouble. Of all the Lombard cities she alone had 
failed to do homage at Pavia. 

In 1158 Frederick summoned the cities to a Diet at Ron- 
caglia. The emperor proposed, simply, to be emperor; that is, 
to resume the prerogatives in the Lombard cities which pre¬ 
vious emperors had enjoyed; in a word, to resume the regalia. 
This meant that in every city certain city property must be 
handed over to the emperor; that the emperor alone had the 
right of coinage; that the emperor might levy and collect taxes; 
and that he might levy soldiers from the cities for his armies. 
Above all it meant, and Barbarossa insisted upon this, that in 
each city a supreme governor or podesta, appointed by the em¬ 
peror himself, should supersede the consuls elected by the citi- 


THE MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE’S FAILURE 357 

zens. Finally, the Lombard cities were forbidden to organize 
leagues among themselves. 

Milan promptly challenged Frederick’s authority and the 
emperor invested the city. Milan’s neighbors had suffered so 
much at her hands that they could hardly be expected to flock 
to her assistance. After a three-year siege the city was taken, 
the walls were leveled, and the city utterly destroyed. Milan’s 
fate sent a thrill of terror through Lombardy. Self-government 
was in grave danger, and the Lombard cities began seriously 
to consider their position. 

Alliance between the Communes and the Papacy 

In the meantime pope and emperor were at war. Refusing 
to accept the avowed anti-imperialist Alexander III as true 
pope, Frederick summoned a Council at Pavia which deposed 
Alexander III and elected Victor IV in his stead. Such was 
Frederick’s authority in Italy, for the moment, that Alexan¬ 
der III, while far from accepting the decision of the Council, 
found it necessary to reside in France. 

The uneasiness of the Lombard cities did not escape the 
notice of the pope. Slowly, in spite of age-old animosities among 
them, a Lombard League was formed under papal leadership. 
With a very few exceptions, all the cities of the Lombard plain 
joined it, and five years after the destruction of Milan it stood 
complete. In the following year, 1168, the League built a brand 
new city between Pavia and Genoa to intercept the trade of 
the former and thus ruin the one remaining imperialist city of 
importance. The new town was named Alessandria, in honor 
of the pope. Pavia was then captured by the League. In the 
meantime the emperor had been called to Germany by an un¬ 
fortunate development in politics there. So great was the men¬ 
ace of the Lombard League, however, that Frederick finally 
returned without settling with Henry the Lion and without his 
support. 

Defeat of the Emperor. The Peace of Venice 

Reaching Lombardy in 1174, Frederick laid siege to Alessan¬ 
dria. The Lombard League began to muster its forces. At 


358 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


length the opposing sides met in a pitched battle, at Legnano, 
in 1176. The emperor was completely defeated. Some of the 
imperial standards captured in this battle still stand as trophies 
in the cathedral of Milan. To his credit, be it said, Frederick 
knew when he was beaten; he accepted the blows of fate without 
bitterness. In July, 1177, pope and emperor met in the porch 
of St. Mark’s cathedral at Venice, where three slabs of marble 
mark the spot. Frederick fell on his knees before Alexander III, 
who raised him up and gave him the kiss of peace. Just a hun¬ 
dred years earlier another emperor had received the papal kiss 
of peace at Canossa. By the Peace of Venice the emperor ac¬ 
knowledged Alexander III as true pope and dropped his anti¬ 
pope. Imperial opposition to the pope in Italy then fell away 
and Alexander took up his residence in Rome for the first time, 
nearly twenty years after his election. 

The papacy had won yet another resounding victory over 
the empire. A truce of six years was arranged at Venice between 
the emperor and the Lombard League, followed by the Peace 
of Constance (1183). By this the emperor withdrew the podes- 
tas; he acknowledged the right of the cities to coin money, to 
exercise jurisdiction over their inhabitants, to wage war and 
make peace, and to form leagues among themselves. Elected 
consuls must still seek the formal approval of the emperor, and 
a right of appeal to the emperor was maintained, but these 
provisions are of small moment. “For all practical purposes 
the Treaty of Constance made the Lombard republics self- 
governing city-states.” 

Expansion of Germany under Henry the Lion 

We have followed the fate of Frederick’s Italian policy from 
its inception to its climax as though this had been his sole pre¬ 
occupation. The truth is that Frederick had been compelled 
to spend much time in Germany during the quarter of a century 
that elapsed between his accession and the Peace of Venice. 
Affairs in Germany had reached a critical stage on the eve of 
the battle of Legnano. 

The principal factor in the affairs of Germany was Henry 
the Lion, duke of Bavaria and of Saxony. This great duke is 


THE MEDLEVAL EMPIRE’S FAILURE 


359 


recognized as one of the founders of modern Germany. While 
the Hohenstaufen king was fighting windmills in Italy Henry 
the Lion was directing German expansion in the East. Meck¬ 
lenburg and Pomerania were the chief Slav centers entered by 
Henry’s soldiers and settlers. Towns were built, bishoprics 
organized, monasteries endowed, and the work of assimilation 
placed upon a permanent footing. Henry was also keenly inter¬ 
ested in the industrial and commercial development of northern 
Germany, as befitted a progressive ruler in that age. The Saxon 
capital, Brunswick, became the seat of a dozen thriving indus¬ 
tries, with wood-carvers, ivory-carvers, goldsmiths, and other 
artisans making it the “German Florence”. Henry’s interest 
in commerce led him to attack the Danish monopoly of the 
Baltic. His capture of Liibeck in 1158 marks the beginning of 
the substitution of Germans for Danes in the rich commerce of 
the Baltic Sea. 

Frederick Barbarossa Humbles Henry the Lion 

Fredrick Barbarossa was not a sympathetic observer of his 
great vassal’s activities. The emperor’s own attitude toward 
commerce and industry is revealed in his treatment of the 
thriving Rhine town of Mainz, the walls of which he leveled 
to the ground in 1163, the year after the destruction of Milan. 
Lack of sympathy betwen Henry and Frederick developed into 
open hostility. Henry had gone to Italy with Frederick in the 
early years of the reign, but in the later years he refused to do 
so. It is clear that Henry felt that Germany’s “national ” policy 
was anti-Slav and anti-Danish, and that Frederick was 
engaged in a wild goose chase. The duke’s defection may 
fairly be said to have contributed to Frederick’s defeat at 
Legnano. 

Once more in Germany, the beaten emperor moved against 
his powerful and defiant baron. Henry the Lion had plenty of 
rivals among his fellow barons and not a few sworn enemies, for 
he had pursued his ends with ruthless energy. Charged with 
failure in service to the king and with having called in the Slavs 
against the Germans, Henry was summoned to answer before 
the Great Council (1180). On his failure to appear he was sen- 


360 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


tenced to forfeiture. Both of his duchies were taken from him, 
though he was allowed to keep much of his private estate. Fred¬ 
erick gave the two duchies to more faithful followers, first weak¬ 
ening them, however, by cutting off a large slice of each which 
he placed in other hands. In general, Frederick’s policy in Ger¬ 
many was to break up the larger feudal units and to strengthen 
the barons of the second rank. 

The Sicilian Marriage 

In humbling Henry the Lion Frederick recovered some of 
the prestige he had lost at Legnano. The aging emperor then 
engineered two further coups which brought him to the summit 
of his career. In 1186 he arranged a marriage between his heir, 
Henry, and Constance, the heiress of the Norman kingdom of 
Naples and Sicily. This was a brilliant stroke of policy in the 
Italian game since it detached the powerful and progressive 
Norman monarchy from the papal side just as papal predomi¬ 
nance in the peninsula had seemed assured. In 1187, following 
the news of the rise of Saladin and the fall of Jerusalem, Fred¬ 
erick took the Cross and energetically assumed the leadership 
of the Third Crusade, a function theretofore monopolized by 
the popes. A formidable force was assembled and set forth, as 
we have seen. Expectation was high, but the emperor’s death 
by drowning overwhelmed all hopes. 

Final Estimate of Barbarossa 

Frederick Barbarossa was not a great statesman; indeed, he 
was hardly a statesman at all. In Germany his policy contrib¬ 
uted to feudal disintegration. The thought of organizing a cen¬ 
tral administration which should supervise and control the 
feudal nobles never occurred to him, it would seem. Yet his 
English contemporary, Henry II, did just such a thing. In 
Italy Frederick’s policy never touched reality. The Roman 
Empire was dead and the papacy and the Lombard communes 
were gloriously alive and rooted in the soil; and yet Frederick 
acted almost as though the reverse was the truth. 

If not a great statesman, however, Frederick Barbarossa was 
a great personality, and as such he has inspired successive gen- 


THE MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE’S FAILURE 


361 


erations of German nationalists. “ Long after his death Germans 
believed that Frederick was sleeping in a cave in the Untersberg, 
with his red beard growing through the stone table at which 
he sat, and that he would awake to save his country in time of 
need.” 1 

Decline of the Empire and Ascendancy of 
Pope Innocent III 

Henry VI, son and successor of Frederick I, was a young man 
of great energy and of considerable ability. A feudal revolt in 
Germany was his welcome to the throne, Henry the Lion being 
the leader. The ex-duke combined with himself other discon¬ 
tented barons of Germany, his brother-in-law Richard I of 
England, and Tancred of Sicily, who had usurped the throne 
of the Norman kingdom. This strong combination was smashed, 
however, partly by King Henry’s forceful blows and partly by 
the blows of fate. Richard the Lion Hearted, returning through 
Christian Germany from the war against the infidels, was cap¬ 
tured and became Henry Vi’s prisoner. Henry the Lion’s son 
fell in love with a Hohenstaufen princess; and then Henry him¬ 
self died (1195). 

Secure in Germany, Henry VI entered Italy. Two leagues 
of Lombard cities, bitterly hostile to each other, sought his 
alliance. The king cleverly played one league off against the 
other and thus secured a measure of support from both. The 
Genoese and Pisan fleets were placed at his disposal. Rome 
opened its gates, and Henry was crowned emperor. Moving 
southward, the new emperor reduced the Norman kingdom, 
his wife’s heritage, to obedience. Tancred’s son, who had suc¬ 
ceeded him in his usurpation, was blinded and mutilated in 
other ways, revealing in Henry VI a sinister strain of cruelty. 

Secure in Germany, dominant in Italy, Henry VI by fulfilling 
his father’s dreams had done much to justify them. But how 
long would it all last? The question need not be faced, for 
Henry died, suddenly and prematurely, in 1197, leaving as his 
heir a boy of three. 

With the death of Henry VI the Mediaeval Empire went into 

1 William Edwards, Notes on European History , I, 172. 


362 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


complete eclipse. Its rival luminary, the papacy, on the other 
hand, reached its zenith under the pope whose elevation came 
in the following year (1198). The new pope was Innocent III. 
This is not the place to survey his manifold activities or to esti¬ 
mate his success; that will be the theme of the chapter which 
follows. We shall note here only those plans and purposes which 
affected the fortunes of the empire. Innocent III was a man of 
remarkable ability. Son of a Roman mother and a Lombard 
noble, Lothair Conti had inherited the political sagacity and 
tenacity of the one race and the imperious temper of the other. 
He had the best education going, having studied theology at 
Paris and law at Bologna. Entering the church, he was made 
a cardinal at twenty-nine by his uncle Clement III, and he 
became pope at the remarkably early age of thirty-seven.. 

The new pope laid great stress upon the political authority 
of the papacy. “No king can reign rightly unless he devoutly 
serves Christ’s vicar”, he said. Furthermore, he maintained 
that it was the pope’s duty to sit in judgment on the princes 
of Europe. His view of the proper relation between papacy and 
empire was soon revealed. On Henry Vi’s death the Hohen- 
staufens and the Guelfs fought for the throne of Germany. The 
former, passing over the infant Frederick, son of Henry VI, put 
forward the dead king’s brother, Philip of Suabia. The Guelfs 
entered the field with Otto of Brunswick, oldest surviving son 
of Henry the Lion. Both sides appealed to the pope, who pref¬ 
aced his decision with the following remarkable pronouncement. 
“It is the duty of the Apostolic See diligently and wisely to take 
counsel as to how she shall provide for the Roman Empire since, 
as is well known, the Empire depends upon the Apostolic See 
for its very origin and for its final authority; for its very origin 
because by her means and for her sake the Empire was trans¬ 
ferred from Greece; by her means because she was the power 
which effected the transference; for her sake in order that the 
Empire might the better defend her; for final authority, because 
the Emperor receives the final or ultimate laying on of hands for 
his promotion from the Chief Pontiff, when he is by him blessed, 
crowned, and invested with the Empire.” 1 

1 Quoted in Sedgwick, Italy in the Thirteenth Century , I, 66-67. 


THE MEDLEVAL EMPIRE’S FAILURE 


363 


The pope then pronounced in favor of the Guelf candidate, 
who took the name of Otto IV. This decision was immediately 
challenged by Philip of Suabia and his partisans. The feudal 
princes of the empire alone had the right to decide such a ques¬ 
tion, they maintained, and a stubborn contest ensued. Both 
Otto and Philip sought allies abroad. Otto was the favorite 
nephew of Richard I of England. Richard, a born fighter, was 
engaged at this time in the fight of his life. His opponent was 
the king of France, his old enemy and overlord. The combina¬ 
tion of Richard and Otto was at once countered by that of Philip 
Augustus and Philip of Suabia. The second combination proved 
stronger than the first. Otto’s defeat seemed assured when sud¬ 
denly, in 1208, after more than ten years of turmoil in Germany, 
Philip of Suabia was murdered by a private enemy. Opposition 
fell away and Otto was everywhere accepted as king. In the 
following year he journeyed to Rome and received the crown 
of empire at the hands of Innocent III. 

Successful in Germany, Innocent Ill’s policy in Italy was 
no less so. We have seen that the Norman kingdom had passed 
to the Hohenstaufen family just before Innocent’s accession. 
Constance, widow of Henry VI, ruled the Norman kingdom as 
regent for the infant Frederick. Feeling the weakness of her 
position she impulsively sought the protection of the new pope. 
Thus the Norman kingdom became a fief of the papacy, owing 
homage and service in the usual way. Before Constance died a 
few months later, in 1198, she placed her boy in the pope’s 
guardianship. Thus the papacy had gained an immense tactical 
advantage in Italian politics. And right loyally did Innocent III 
live up to his obligations to his little ward. For ten years he 
fought to defend the rights of the Hohenstaufen heir, whose 
claims were resisted by the Norman and German barons of 
Sicily. At length the pope prevailed, and Frederick II was ac¬ 
cepted as king of Sicily under the overlordship of the pope. 

Not long thereafter a turn of fortune’s wheel brought the 
young Frederick to the throne of Germany as well. Otto IV, 
with astonishing ineptitude, pursued policies both in Germany 
and in Italy which cost him the support of his German barons 
and of the pope himself. A group of the former invited Prince 


364 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Frederick to contest the throne of Germany with Otto. The 
pope gave his approval and Frederick hurried northward. In 
1212, at the age of eighteen, he was crowned king at Mainz. 
He had now to win the throne he had assumed. Again the con¬ 
test between Guelf and Hohenstaufen assumed an international 
aspect. Frederick’s ally was Philip of France, while Otto’s was 
John of England. The French king was the dominant figure 
and his triumph at Bouvines in 1214 is a major event in the his¬ 
tory of three countries. After Bouvines Otto IV withdrew to 
his estates and Frederick II was received everywhere as king 
in Germany. 


Personality of Frederick II 

The new king (1212-1250) was one of the most remarkable 
personalities of the middle ages. Bereft of his father before 
he was three and of his mother a year later, Frederick was 
thrust into the arena of politics almost before he could walk. 
The young prince early learned to distrust those about him, 
and he developed a hardy and cynical self-reliance. He was 
gifted with a “first-rate mind, open, inquiring, realistic.” He 
may be said to have directed his own education, for his guardian, 
Innocent III, exercised only a distant supervision. Palermo, 
where Frederick grew up, was at that time unquestionably the 
most stimulating cultural environment in western Europe. 
Indeed, we shall do well to emphasize that Frederick was a Si¬ 
cilian, not a German. 

Political and Economic Progress in Sicily 

The island of Sicily was at the crossroads of the Mediterra¬ 
nean. There Europe, Asia, and Africa met and mingled their 
peoples, their religions, their cultures, and their commerce. Ital¬ 
ians, Greeks, Arabs, and Jews were all firmly established in the 
island, striving to preserve and develop their religious, linguis¬ 
tic, and cultural life. To these four elements had been added, 
in the eleventh century, the Normans. It was here that the 
assimilative and organizing genius of that gifted people reached 
its fullest expression. 

Under Roger II (1112-1154) the Sicilian state became the 


THE MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE’S FAILURE 


365 


best organized monarchy in Europe. Its basis was full toleration 
and fair treatment for all religions and races. Upon this founda¬ 
tion was erected, by Roger II and Frederick II, what has been 
called the “first modern state.” A centralized administration 
supervised the local units and assured justice to all. The staff 
was made up of laymen, not clergymen as elsewhere in western 
Europe, and all races were represented in its membership. 
Seven high officers were heads of the administrative depart¬ 
ments, and they formed the king’s council. Especially “ mod¬ 
ern” was the system of taxation, one item of which was a poll 
tax which every one paid, regardless of race or creed. All ele¬ 
ments of the population were represented in the army. Soldiers 
were paid out of the royal treasury, thus making the army royal, 
not feudal. Frederick IFs main reliance was a force of Saracens, 
well paid and well cared for, who served as palace troops. An 
Arab and a Greek admiral shared the command of Frederick’s 
navy. 

Frederick also set up a parliament, to which representatives 
of the various social orders were summoned. This body (c. 1225) 
was the first of such assemblies in European history. Feudalism 
was not destroyed in Sicily by this Norman monarchy, as is 
sometimes stated, but it was strictly regulated. Perhaps the 
greatest achievement of Frederick II, as ruler of Sicily, was his 
Code of laws, issued in 1231. In this Code feudal law was dis¬ 
placed by Roman law in large measure, thus setting the fashion 
which most of western Europe was ultimately to follow. Fred¬ 
erick’s Code was far in advance of its times. Some of its features 
were an emphasis upon prevention of crime rather than upon 
its punishment, the safeguarding of personal liberty, the pro¬ 
tection of the weak, the abolition of the ordeal, the protection 
of aliens, and the protection of the property rights of women. 

Frederick’s economic policy was as enlightened as was his 
political. He laid out model farms where the cultivation of 
cotton and the sugar cane was studied. He fostered the clearing 
of forests and the draining of swamps. Road-mending and 
bridge-building were energetically undertaken by this king who 
understood their importance. New cities were founded. Immi¬ 
gration was encouraged by the promise of ten years’ freedom 


366 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


from taxation. In short, “the kingdom of Sicily was raised to a 
state of prosperity and civilization not reached as yet by any 
other country of Europe.” 1 

Cultural Advance under Frederick II 

Even more remarkable than the political and economic de¬ 
velopment of the Sicilian monarchy, however, was its cultural 
advancement. Under Frederick II Palermo became the cultural 
capital of Europe. It is not over-fanciful, perhaps, to see in the 
court of Frederick II the prelude to the Italian Renascence, 
that “new life of the Italian spirit which in its maturity filled 
Europe with its glory.” Frederick surrounded himself with the 
leading scholars of his age, whether Christian, Hebrew, Greek, 
or Arabic. He himself could be “witty and fluent” in six lan¬ 
guages. Michael the Scot, mathematician, Leonard of Pisa, 
astronomer, and Adam of Cremona, physician, were the best 
known of the Christian scholars at Frederick’s court. 

Frederick himself took an active interest in the intellectual 
life of the court, being mentally superior to most of those about 
him. He had an enquiring mind, and he was an accurate ob¬ 
server. The works of Aristotle he knew well; but he presumed 
to doubt him whom the middle ages reverenced as a god, noting 
in the margin of his own copy of Aristotle’s works, from time 
to time, “It is not so”. Frederick was especially interested in 
natural science. He made a collection of animals from Asia 
and Africa—lions, elephants, leopards, dromedaries, even a 
giraffe, said to be the first seen in Europe. This “zoo” trav¬ 
eled with the emperor as he journeyed through Italy, making 
the royal progress look like a circus parade. Frederick also 
wrote a book on falconry (De Arte Veniandi cum Avibus), based 
upon his own observations and experiments. His interest in 
medicine led him to make experiments in bloodletting, dieting, 
and bathing. During his Crusade he had Adam of Cremona 
make experiments in public hygiene. Frederick restored the 
university of Salerno, which his father, Henry VI, had sup¬ 
pressed, and he founded the university of Naples (1224). 

Not finding sufficient intellectual resources at his own court, 

1 Cambridge Mediaeval History , VI, 151. 


THF MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE’S FAILURE 


367 


Frederick was accustomed to draw up questionnaires which he 
sent to neighboring princes, chiefly Moslems. His questions are 
interesting. “ Why do objects partly covered with water appear 
bent? Why is sea water bitter and other water sweet? How 
thick is the earth and how long is it? Just where are heaven, 
hell, and purgatory, and how far away are they? ” There was an 
element of skepticism in Frederick’s line of thought which laid 
him open to the charge of infidelity to the Christian religion. 
He was formally charged with blasphemy by Pope Gregory IX, 
who alleged that Frederick had said that “the world has been 
deceived by these three impostors—Jesus Christ, Moses, and 
Mohammed; two of these died in honor, the third was hanged 
on a tree.” Frederick lent color to these charges by his practice 
of maintaining a harem and by his reliance upon Saracen troops. 
His habit of bathing on Sunday was also regarded with sus¬ 
picion. 

Frederick stoutly denied that he was an unbeliever. Probably 
he was not a very religious man, though outwardly conforming. 
He sheltered at his court, however, some who openly mocked 
the Christian clergy. Frederick’s chancellor, Pier della Vigna, 
is responsible for the following: 

“The life of holy prelates is abominably funny, 

Their hearts are full of venom while their tongues are dropping honey; 
They pipe a pretty melody, and so approach discreetly, 

And offer you a cordial, mixed with poison, very sweetly.” 1 

In estimating the cultural importance of Frederick’s reign 
in Sicily, however, it should be borne in mind that its brilliance 
faded with Frederick’s death, leaving no afterglow. Far ahead 
of his age as he was, so far as to be almost out of touch with it, 
Frederick was not an educational statesman, that is, the founder 
of institutions which would live long after his death and gradu¬ 
ally transform society. 

We have seen that Frederick II inherited the efficient Norman 
monarchy of his grandfather, Roger II. The young prince had 
been christened Frederick-Roger, however, his other grand¬ 
father being Frederick Barbarossa. From his paternal grand- 

1 Sedgwick, op. cit., I, 119. 


368 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


father Frederick II drew his imperial policy, that of uniting 
Italy with Germany in the empire. We have seen how valiantly 
and how vainly Frederick Barbarossa had striven to realize this 
dream. The measure of Frederick II is revealed in the fact that 
with obstacles in his path more formidable than the first Frederick 
had encountered he seemed for a time to be close to success. 

Frederick IFs Crusade 

The great pope Innocent III died in 1216 and was succeeded 
by Honorius III (1216-1227). The new pope was mild and gentle 
in temper, disposed to emphasize the spiritual leadership of the 
church, and interested above all in reviving the Crusades. He 
crowned Frederick II emperor at Rome, in 1216, on condition 
that the kingdom of Sicily be held separate from Germany and 
that Frederick lead a Crusade. Frederick may have thought it 
necessary to make those two promises, but he certainly found 
it impossible to keep them. The crusading fervor was alien to 
Frederick’s rational mind; besides, his Italian policy called 
for all his military and financial resources. Excommunicated 
for not going, Frederick at length embarked upon a Crusade, 
in 1227, only to return after three days because of “illness”. 
This brought a second excommunication. While still excom¬ 
municate Frederick set forth again in real earnest and reached 
the Holy Land at the head of a considerable expedition. There 
he negotiated a treaty with the Moslem princes which secured 
Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth in Christian possession. 
Marrying Iolande de Brienne, the daughter of the king of Jeru¬ 
salem, Frederick crowned himself king of Jerusalem in the 
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He then returned, having ac¬ 
complished more by diplomacy than most crusading leaders 
had done by hard fighting. 

Frederick Defeats the Lombard League 

Having redeemed his crusader’s pledge, after a fashion, Fred¬ 
erick threw himself energetically into his plan of uniting Italy. 
Proceeding to Lombardy he asserted the imperial authority 
over the cities. The Lombard cities, wealthier, more populous, 
and more proudly independent than ever, straightway revived 


THE MEDLEVAL EMPIRE’S FAILURE 


369 


the Lombard League. With consummate skill Frederick sowed 
dissension among the cities and at the proper moment attacked 
and defeated the forces of the League at the battle of Corte 
Nuova, in 1237. Of course Lombardy was not to be won in a 
single battle. The cities retired behind their walls and made 
preparations to resist to the bitter end. 

Frederick II and the Papacy 

Having set up an administrative and military system charged 
with the systematic reduction of the Lombard cities, Frederick 
turned his attention to his most formidable Italian opponent, 
namely, the papacy. Gregory IX, who became pope in 1227, 
was over eighty years old but he was notably vigorous and elo¬ 
quent in stating the papal claims. The empire was a papal fief, 
he said. The pope had power to sit in judgment upon the em¬ 
peror, as upon all princes, and to depose him if unworthy. Greg¬ 
ory IX declared that the humblest priest, by virtue of his spir¬ 
itual character, was superior to the greatest king. The pope 
further objected to Frederick on personal grounds. “ He says ”, 
affirmed the pope, “that one ought to believe absolutely only 
what is proved by natural laws and by the reason of man.” 
Frederick replied with equal vigor, claiming to hold his throne 
from God alone and adding, characteristically, that neither 
the pope nor the devil could take it from him. Gregory pro¬ 
claimed a Crusade against Frederick, who replied by appealing 
to all the princes of Christendom to combine against the pope, 
whom Frederick characterized as “a man of falsehood, a pol¬ 
luted priest . . . and a ravening wolf.” 

With honors easy in the verbal interchange, Frederick pro¬ 
ceeded to act. The members of an ecclesiastical Council sum¬ 
moned to Rome were captured by Frederick’s fleet and impris¬ 
oned at Naples. Frederick then proceeded to build up a party 
among the Roman citizenry which made the city almost un¬ 
tenable for Gregory IX. As the aged pope prepared to flee, he 
died. His successor, Innocent IV, made no attempt to reside in 
Rome but journeyed northward to central France, where he 
established himself at Lyons. Summoning a General Council 
there, in 1245, he placed the emperor on trial and deposed him. 


370 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


“We excommunicate Frederick, and depose him from all the 
dignity of the Empire and from the Kingdom of Naples”—in 
these words the pope pronounced judgment. The throne of 
Germany was offered to several different princes and finally 
was accepted by Count William of Holland. With the situation 
in Italy well in hand Frederick was preparing to set out for the 
north, when he died (1250). 

The Last of the Hohenstaufens 

Frederick II was the last of the “brilliant and attractive 
failures ” which the Mediaeval Empire produced. He was prob¬ 
ably the greatest personality of the thirteenth century. And it 
is the considered opinion of a recent authority that “among 
the rulers in the centuries between Charlemagne and Napoleon 
he has no equal.” 1 Frederick’s son, Conrad IV, died in 1254 
leaving a boy of two, Conradin, as his heir. Pope Innocent IV, 
bent on the extermination of the hated Hohenstaufens, called 
upon Charles of Anjou, a younger brother of Louis IX of France, 
to take the crown of Sicily. Charles’s success was complete. In 
1268 Conradin, last of the Hohenstaufens, was executed in 
Naples as a “ traitor ”. We may say, then, that the Mediaeval 
Empire as a “ living system of government ” came to an end 
with the death of Frederick II. Later emperors adopted the 
unheroic if more realistic policy of keeping out of Italian poli¬ 
tics. Italy itself remained hopelessly divided for more than six 
centuries. Indeed, the attempt to unite Italy by extinguishing 
the temporal power of the papacy has never been repeated. 

Feudal Disintegration of Germany 

With a glance at Germany during the reign of Frederick II 
we shall have completed our survey of the Mediaeval Empire. 
Germany was far advanced on the road to feudal decentrali¬ 
zation on Frederick’s accession. Frederick Barbarossa’s policy 
of favoring the lesser nobility had contributed to this end. The 
civil wars between Philip of Suabia and Otto IV, and then be¬ 
tween Otto and Frederick II, lasting over twenty years, had 
the same result. Rival kings bid against each other for feudal 

1 Dr. Michelangelo Sclupa, Cambridge Mediaeval History, VI, 165. 


THE MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE’S FAILURE 


371 


support, and feudal support could be bought only by further 
concessions of royal lands and royal rights. Frederick II con¬ 
tinued to distribute favors with both hands, even after he had 
won general recognition as king. For one thing, he had no in¬ 
terest in Germany. He hated the climate and despised the 
scenery. In a reign of forty years Frederick spent no more 
than eight in Germany, nearly all in the early part of his reign. 
During the final thirteen years of his reign Frederick was not 
in Germany at all. His German policy, then, was to give the 
princes what they wanted. In 1220 he issued a Charter of Lib¬ 
erties to the German bishops, resigning the royal rights of coin¬ 
age and of tolls and renouncing the right to build castles in 
episcopal territories. Save in the actual presence of the king, a 
German prince-bishop was now sovereign in his principality. 
Lay barons were given equivalent rights in another charter 
issued in 1231. It became the fashion in Frederick IFs reign to 
speak of “The Germanies” rather than of “Germany”. 

Politically a failure, and increasingly so, German life con¬ 
tinued its development along other lines, however. The mar¬ 
graves of Brandenburg conquered Pomerania, along the Baltic. 
Livonia was conquered and Christianized by a military order 
called the “ Knights of the Sword ”, founded in 1200 by the 
bishop of Bremen. In 1230 the Teutonic Order was transferred 
from Palestine to Prussia, which was then gradually Christianized 
and Germanized. By the end of Frederick’s reign “the Baltic 
bid fair to become a German lake.” German cities also devel¬ 
oped greatly in the thirteenth century. They fought for inde¬ 
pendence from their immediate overlords, the bishops and 
barons, and began to form leagues among themselves. The 
reign of Frederick II saw the first use of the German language 
as a literary medium, especially in poetry. Walter von der 
Vogelweide, most famous of the minnesingers, flourished in 
Frederick’s reign. Parsifal was the work of Wolfram of Eschen- 
bach, in the same period, and Godfrey of Strasburg retold the 
love story of Tristram and Iseult. Despite the lack of royal 
leadership, therefore, German life was expressing itself in im¬ 
portant ways, and the German nation was passing through a 
noteworthy phase of its development. 


372 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


For Further Reading 

G. B. Adams, Civilization during the Middle Ages, chap. 10 
Cambridge Mediaeval History, V, chaps. 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14; VI, 

chaps. 2, 3, 4, and 5 
T. F. Tout, Empire and Papacy 
J. W. Thompson, Feudal Germany 
C. H. Haskins, The Normans in European History 

H. D. Sedgwick, Italy in the Thirteenth Century, vol. I 

E. F. Henderson, A Short History of Germany 
James Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire 

F. Gregorovius, History of Rome in the Middle Ages, vols. IV and V 
H. A. L. Fisher, The Mediaeval Empire 

W. F. Butler, The Lombard Communes 
W. Barry, The Papal Monarchy 
A. L. Poole, Henry the Lion 

L. Allshorn, Stupor Mundi: the Life and Times of Frederic II 


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 


THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 

The mediaeval church touched more human lives and touched 
them at more points than any other institution. Mediaeval 
man believed what many “moderns ” are coming again to be¬ 
lieve, that “the spiritual world is as much of a reality as the 
material world The church was, first of all, a spiritual agency, 
nurturing human souls while life should last and bringing them 
safely home at life’s end. But the mediaeval church was also a 
political force, endeavoring to keep the princes of this world 
in subjection to the end that human souls might have a better 
earthly environment. The thirteenth century saw the church 
at the height of its development and power in both of its as¬ 
pects; and the pope who realized most fully both the spiritual 
and the political claims of the church was Innocent III (1198- 
1216). 


Institutions of Central Government 

Innocent III seems to have been the first pope to call himself 
“Vicar of Christ This title well symbolizes the place of the 
pope in the organization of the church. “Vicar ” was a technical 
term taken from Roman law; the vicar was an officer whom an 
all-powerful emperor invested with supreme authority. Pope 
Boniface VIII later elaborated the concept of authority em¬ 
bodied in the term Vicar of Christ in the famous bull Unam 
Sandam (1302): “We declare, say, and define, that it is wholly 
necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject 
to the Roman Pontiff.” 

In the exercise of his supreme authority the pope was assisted 
by his Household. This consisted of the papal Curia , made up 
of household officers and administrative heads, the Consistory, 
or papal Council, the Chancery, and the Camera. The Con¬ 
sistory was made up of the cardinals, numbering about thirty 

373 


374 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


in the thirteenth century. They were appointed by the pope, 
and many of them were individually assigned to various func¬ 
tions in the papal government, chiefly judicial. The chief func¬ 
tion of the cardinals as a body was that of electing the pope. 
On the death of a pope the College of Cardinals took over the 
government of the church for the time being. To elect a new 
pope the cardinals met in Conclave, that is, they locked them¬ 
selves up together. A two-thirds majority was necessary for 
election. 

The Chancery was the secretariat where were drawn up and 
sealed the thousands of letters, mandates, and bulls (from bulla, 
a leaden seal) which were sent out from Rome every year. 
Elaborate precautions were taken to authenticate papal docu¬ 
ments properly and so prevent forgery. A chancery style was 
developed, very difficult of imitation. The seals were very 
elaborate and the threads attaching them to the parch¬ 
ment were of varied colors. Some idea of the vast cor¬ 
respondence passing through the Chancery may be gathered 
from the fact that in 1881, when the papal archives were 
opened to students by Pope Leo XIII, they ran to over 
4,000,000 volumes. 

The papal Camera was the strong room in which the treasury 
was kept and the department in which a staff of bookkeepers, 
accountants, and so on, ordered the finances of the papacy. 
As to the size of the papal revenue in the thirteenth century 
we may merely say that it exceeded that of all the monarchies 
of Europe put together. Some revenue was derived from the 
papal estates scattered through the Italian peninsula and indeed 
throughout western Europe. Feudal dues were paid to the pope 
by vassal princes such as the king of England (after 1213), the 
king of Aragon, and the king of Hungary. 

Much more important, however, was the revenue which ac¬ 
crued to the pope through the exercise of his spiritual authority. 
This was greatly varied in any age, and was subject to many 
changes as old sources dried up and new ones were discovered. 
Among the more important “spiritual” revenues of the thir¬ 
teenth century were Peter’s pence, a sort of hearth tax paid 
by all Christian householders; annates or first-fruits, being the 


THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 


375 


whole of the first year’s revenue paid by a newly appointed 
bishop; the profits of justice, a very considerable item since 
appeals to the papal Curia from ecclesiastical courts all over 
Europe were very numerous; and fees for dispensations, that is, 
permission to marry within prohibited degrees of relationship, 
to hold more than one ecclesiastical office at a time (we hear of 
an Englishman who held seventeen), or other waivers of the 
multitudinous provisions of the canon law. Finally, an im¬ 
portant source of revenue was the gifts and offerings of the 
pilgrims who wended their way to Rome from all over the West, 
and fairly swarmed in the streets of the papal capital in Jubilee 
years. 

Another institution of the “central government ” of the pa¬ 
pacy was the great church Councils. There were five of them in 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (the five Lateran Councils 
of 1123,1139, 1179, 1198, and 1215). They were very numer¬ 
ously attended, upwards of one thousand bishops, archbishops, 
abbots, priors, and others being present. Every country in 
western and central Europe was represented—Hungary, Poland, 
Denmark, Norway, Scotland, and England, as well as Germany, 
France, and Spain. We must not think of these Councils as 
legislative assemblies or as limiting in any way the plenitude 
of papal power. The popes presided over them and formulated 
their action. The Councils demonstrated the unity and power 
of the church and they were called together for their moral 
effect on the public opinion of Europe. 

Bishops and Archbishops 

The fundamental subdivision of the papal “empire ”, as of 
the Roman Empire, was the diocese. Indeed, the boundaries 
of an ecclesiastical diocese were often exactly those of an old 
Roman diocese. At the head of the diocese was a bishop. An 
archbishop was merely a bishop who was invested with a certain 
amount of authority over some of his fellow bishops. The dio¬ 
ceses under the authority of an archbishop formed a province. 
In every country one archbishop, usually the one whose episco¬ 
pal foundation was the oldest, was called the primate. The 
archbishop of Canterbury in England, of Mainz in Germany, 


376 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


of Rheims in France, and of Toledo in Spain were so des¬ 
ignated. 

By tradition a bishop was elected by the clergy and people of 
his diocese. There was thus a close relationship between the 
bishop and his people. In the ceremony of consecration the 
bishop-elect was given a crosier, or shepherd’s crook, to remind 
him that he must be a good shepherd to his sheep. A book of 
the Gospels was given him to remind him that he must preach 
to his people. The mitre placed upon the bishop’s head was a 
symbol of the authority of Christ, and the ring placed upon 
the fourth finger of his right hand symbolized the marriage of 
Christ and the church. The people ceased to have any direct 
share in the election of their bishop early in the middle ages 
and the clergy came to control the election, more especially those 
clergy associated with the cathedral of the diocese. The clergy of 
a cathedral were the local bishop’s “college of cardinals ”. They 
were appointed by the bishop and collectively formed the cathe¬ 
dral Chapter, with a dean of their own choosing at their head. The 
Chapters gradually acquired separate endowments of their own. 
This enabled them to become controlling factors in the dioceses. 

Though the bishops were elected, normally, by the clergy 
of the cathedral Chapters, there were exceptions to this rule. 
We have seen that the feudal princes of western Europe fought 
for control of the bishops, and that the church repulsed the 
great feudatories, at length, and vindicated her right to fill 
those most important offices herself. By a natural evolution 
within the church itself, however, the popes came more and 
more to interest themselves in the filling of the episcopal offices. 
A contested election was always referred to the papal Curia for 
decision, the contestants resigning their claims in advance. If 
a bishop died while on a visit to Rome his successor, by custom, 
was appointed by the pope. Further, cathedral Chapters were 
often persuaded to resign their right of election in advance. 
Finally Boniface VIII declared in the bull Ausculta filii (1301) 
that the right of appointment to all vacant sees belonged to 
the pope alone, the Chapters having power to nominate only. 
Thus was a very great step taken toward establishing the ab¬ 
solute monarchy of the papacy. 


THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 377 


The Parish Priest 

The subdivision of a diocese was the parish. Most parishes 
were rural, though with the rise and growth of towns there 
came to be urban parishes also. A rural parish was usually co¬ 
terminous with a manor. Repulsed in its attempt to gain con¬ 
trol over the higher offices of the church, feudalism’s success 
in the parishes was complete and the landlords generally ap¬ 
pointed the parish priests. The priest was entitled to receive 
the income from the endowments of the parish church, the 
tithes of grain, cattle, eggs, milk, and all other produce of the 
farming community, the fees for marriage and burial, and the 
offerings of the faithful. The lord of the manor might appoint a 
layman as the actual incumbent, himself, for example, or his 
son. The incumbent could then hire a clerk for a fixed sum to 
perform the spiritual functions of the office while he himself 
kept the surplus revenue. Thus the right of appointment was 
often abused and the spiritual needs of the parish grossly 
neglected. Monasteries like Cluny bought up the right of ap¬ 
pointment in neighboring parishes so as to supply them with 
worthy priests; but the total effect of all such efforts was negli¬ 
gible. The landlords remained in control to the close of the 
middle ages. 

Classes from Which the Clergy were Drawn 

It is a noteworthy fact that in an age when human society 
lay in solid and unyielding feudal strata the church sent down 
deep shafts through which a man might climb to the top. In 
early feudal times most bishops were of noble family. The 
Cluny reform broke down this monopoly, however, and bishops 
of servile origin became numerous. Popes from the lower classes 
were not unknown. “However much rank and family connec¬ 
tions might assist in securing promotion to higher place, yet 
talent and energy could always make themselves felt despite 
lowliness of birth. Urban II and Hadrian IV sprang from the 
humblest origins; Alexander V had been a beggar-boy; Greg¬ 
ory VII was the son of a carpenter; Sixtus IV, of a peasant; 


378 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Urban IV and John XXII were sons of cobblers, and Bene¬ 
dict XI and Sixtus V, of shepherds.” 1 

The great new religious orders of the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries, the Cistercians, the Franciscans, and the Dominicans, 
drew, their very large membership from the lower classes almost 
exclusively. Parish priests were regularly from the lower classes, 
often the very lowest, for even a serf might enter his boy in the 
clergy, with his lord’s consent, readily obtained for a fee. This 
sympathetic contact between the people and a priest of their 
own social class laid a solid foundation for the ministry of the 
church to the people. But it is easy, and it would be a grave 
error, to exaggerate the democratic element in the mediaeval 
church. Representatives of the lower classes in the highest 
offices were dazzling exceptions. The door to talent was only 
just open, and no more. 

The Sacraments 

As we have seen, the church taught and mediaeval man be¬ 
lieved that the principal matter of human concern in this world 
was salvation. Man required to be saved from sin, both original 
and personal. To win salvation man must act. But he could 
perform no act which is meritorious of salvation without divine 
grace. How, then, might a man gain access to divine grace? 
Only through the church, was the reply, in the sacrifice of the 
Mass and in the administration of the sacraments. 

“The Sacraments are visible forms of invisible grace.” Indi¬ 
vidually they have a long history, going back to the earliest 
days of Christianity. Limitation to the sacred number of seven 
came in the twelfth century, and this limitation was generally 
recognized through the middle ages, though the first official 
declaration on the subject came at the close of the mediaeval 
period (1439). In Baptism the taint of original sin was washed 
away. A white cloth was placed upon the head of the baptized 
person as a symbol of purity. He was given a candle to hold 
(“Ye are the light of the world ”); and a few grains of salt were 
put in his mouth (“Ye are the salt of the earth ”). The baptized 

1 Lea, History of the Inquisition, I, 4. Quoted by Thompson, op. cit., 
pp. 675-676. 


THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 379 


person was given a Christian name, also, whence our word 
“ christening if an adult and a pagan, Baptism would involve 
dropping the pagan name. Baptism in infancy became the habit 
of the church very early, however. Confirmation took place 
during adolescence and could be performed only by a bishop. 
By this sacrament the young person was strengthened by di¬ 
vine grace to resist evil. Penance was for sin committed after 
Baptism. A priest had power through this sacrament to for¬ 
give sin. 

There were three essential elements in Penance. The first 
was contrition. This was a turning of the heart away from its 
sin, a feeling of compunction and a sense of shame. The second 
element was confession with the mouth. Public confession seems 
to have been the rule in the early church, but this was replaced 
by private confession to a priest. At the Vatican Council of 
1215 Pope Innocent III directed that every person should con¬ 
fess once a year to his own priest and endeavor to perform the 
penance imposed upon him; having confessed, he might then 
receive the Holy Eucharist. Failure to comply with this re¬ 
quirement might entail exclusion from church or refusal of 
Christian burial. The third element was satisfaction, by which 
the penitent “made good ” the wrong he had done in whatever 
way his confessor deemed best, such as by prayer, fasting, alms¬ 
giving, and so on. Regular schedules were drawn up for the 
guidance of confessors, in the course of time, in which all the 
usual sins were listed, each with its appropriate punishment. 
Penalties imposed but not performed before death involved a 
stay in Purgatory. To alleviate the sufferings of souls detained 
in Purgatory the Sacrifice of the Mass in their behalf was 
efficacious. 

Around the element of satisfaction undeniable abuses grew 
up. A baron sometimes compelled his serfs to do his fasting 
for him. Such a lordly penitent might overawe a parish priest 
but he certainly did not deceive God. The “doctrine of indul¬ 
gences ” was famous both for its use and for its abuse. Christ, 
who had not sinned at all, and the saints and martyrs, whose 
sins were few, were deemed, through their superabundance of 
good works, to have laid up a “treasury of merit ” for the church, 


380 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


sometimes known as “ works of supererogation ”. It was felt 
that a priest might draw upon this treasury for the benefit of 
sinners unable, by reason of the multiplicity of their sins and 
the brevity of human life, to make full satisfaction. It is evident 
that this doctrine, so delicately articulated and so difficult to 
understand, is readily subject to misinterpretation and abuse. 

Most important of the sacraments was the Eucharist, or 
Lord’s Supper. The full teaching of the church in this matter 
was set forth at the Council of 1215. The dogma of “the real 
presence of the incarnate Christ by the process of transubstan- 
tiation ” was there affirmed. The priest in pronouncing the sol¬ 
emn words, “This is my body ”,etc., performed a miracle, the 
bread and wine becoming Body and Blood. The elevation of 
the Host was then signalized by the ringing of a bell and con¬ 
stituted the most dramatic part of the ceremony of the Mass. 
To all outward seeming the bread and wine remained as they 
were; but, following a distinction drawn by Aristotle, it was 
deemed possible to distinguish between the “accidents” of a 
thing, that is, its taste, touch, color, etc., and its “substance 
The substance of a thing might be altered while its accidents 
remained as before. Partaking of the Eucharist endued the 
recipient with divine grace whereby his soul was nourished and 
fortified. The church taught that “Christ was present entire 
in both bread and wine.” Consequently it came to be customary 
to offer the laity bread alone, owing, in part, to the danger of 
spilling the precious wine (now become Blood). 

Not only did the priest celebrate the Eucharist for the benefit 
of those assembled in the church or chapel; he might also do so 
for the remission of the sins of some particular person or for the 
benefit of the soul of a person deceased. For such a service the 
priest received a stipend from the person benefited or, in the 
case of the dead, from some interested friend or relative. In¬ 
deed, it was quite general to leave by will a sum sufficient to 
pay for the celebration of a certain number of Masses for the 
repose of one’s soul. Thousands of priests drew their sole sup¬ 
port from such stipends. 

A fifth sacrament, and the last in which all men might par¬ 
ticipate, was Extreme Unction. This was administered to any 


THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 381 


one in peril of death and consisted of an anointing with oil that 
had been blessed and, where possible, the partaking of a con¬ 
secrated wafer or viaticum. 

Marriage was deemed a sacrament and a religious ceremony 
was compulsory. Marriage within certain degrees of relation¬ 
ship was strictly forbidden. Divorce was not allowed. A mar¬ 
riage was sometimes “nullified ” by an ecclesiastical court, but 
this was because the court, upon inquiry, was convinced that 
some element in the sacrament of marriage had not been present 
and that the marriage had never been valid. In all these respects 
the attitude of the church in the earlier centuries had been by 
no means so uncompromising as it later became. 

Finally, we come to the sacrament of Ordination, through 
which a man became a priest, with power to offer the sacrifice 
of the Mass and to forgive sin. The first rite was the tonsure, 
in which a spot was smoothly shaved on the top of the candi¬ 
date’s head. This signified that he had been admitted to the 
clerical order. Then followed rites by which he was admitted 
to the several Minor Orders, such as lector, or reader, and aco¬ 
lyte, or minister at the altar. The Holy Orders of subdeacon, 
deacon, and priest followed with rites of increasing solemnity, 
concluding with the bishop laying his hands on the candidate’s 
head and saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins ye remit 
are remitted; whose sins ye retain are retained.” 

The Liturgy 

The mediaeval church had an elaborate and splendid liturgy 
which, as Innocent III himself explained, was an allegorical 
presentation of the stories and teachings of the Bible. The 
liturgy fell into two parts, the “Ordinary ” and the Canon. The 
Ordinary (Ordinarium Missx) included certain fixed parts such 
as the Gloria , the Creed, and the Sanctus , together with certain 
Psalms, prayers, and selections from the Bible which varied 
with the day. The Canon comprised the celebration of the Eu¬ 
charist. In this ceremony every gesture of the priest as well 
as every word uttered by him was fixed and regulated. The 
Ordinary was sung throughout, either by the people or by a 
choir. The music to which the words were set is known as plain 


382 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


song, and is often called Gregorian, from Pope Gregory V who 
made a collection of the traditional music in use in his day. In 
plain song the melody is subordinated to the words. There is 
no harmony, and since the words were prose, the rhythm is ora¬ 
torical and irregular. Even the intoning of the Gospel or Epistle 
was a sort of plain song. As sung by a great choir of men and 
boys to the accompaniment of an organ in a cathedral with 
vaulted roof and echoing aisles, with the scene embellished by 
the rich vestments of the clergy and the sumptuous furnishings 
of the altar, and the whole lighted by the fitful gleam of candles 
through an atmosphere charged with incense, the Mass aroused 
a powerful emotional response. 

Instruction of the People in their own Tongue 

It is true that every word of the service was in Latin, which 
only the clergy could read. It is true, also, that the Bible itself 
was available only in a Latin translation. But the religious in¬ 
struction of the laity was provided for and, upon the whole, 
adequately. Besides the allegory of the Mass and the rich archi¬ 
tectural symbolism of churches and cathedrals, much instruc¬ 
tion was given the people in their own tongue. Many manuals 
were drawn up for the guidance of parish priests in the art of 
religious teaching. One such manual, translated into English 
in the later middle ages, enjoined priests to teach the people the 
“Our Father ”, the “ Hail Mary ”, and the “I believe ”. In case 
any one doubted that God could be Three and One at the same 
time, the priest was advised to say, 

“Leste thys be harde you to leve, 

By ensampul I wole that pruve. 

Se the ensampul that I you schowe, 

Of water and ys and eke snowe, 

Here beth thre thynges, as ye may se, 

And yet the thre, alle water be.” 1 

The following was offered as a form of confession: 

“God, I crye the mercy, 

And thy moder seynt mary, 

1 John Myrc, Instruction for Parish Priests. 


THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 


383 


And alle the seyntes of hevn brygt, 

I crye mercy wyth all my might, 

Of alle the synnes I have wrogt, 

In werke and worde, and sory thogt, 

Wyth every lyme of my body, 

Wyth sore herte I aske god mercy, 

And the, fader, in goddes place, 

A-soyle me thou of my trespace, 

Geve me penaunce also to, 

For goddes love that thou so do.” 

The following question with its answer stirs in the reader an 
uneasy suspicion that mediaeval priests sometimes were not all 
that they might have been. 

“But what and thou so dronken be 
That thy tonge wole not serve the, 

Thenne folowe (baptize) thow not by no way, 

But thou mo we the wordes say.” 

Veneration of the Virgin and Saints 

To the common people the easiest approach to God seemed 
to he through the intercession of the saints and especially 
through the mediation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The powers 
of God were too awful, His wrath too terrible, the pains of Hell 
too real to contemplate. Even Christ, who had taken upon 
Himself the form of man to mediate between sinful man and an 
avenging God, was too majestic in His divinity for the children 
of men to feel entirely at their ease in His presence. But the 
saints had been men with human frailties. Men sought their 
intercession with God, through prayer, vows, and offerings. 
Some had their favorite saints, as did gilds, cities, and even na¬ 
tions. The calendar was completely filled, every day in the 
year, with “saint’s days ”. For saints left over a day was allot¬ 
ted called All Saints’ Day. Lives of the saints were exceedingly 
popular and constituted a considerable part of the body of medi¬ 
aeval literature. 

More popular than any saint, however, was the Blessed Vir¬ 
gin. The veneration of the Virgin was one of the most charac¬ 
teristic aspects of mediaeval religion. Countless shrines were 


384 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


dedicated to her, including nearly all the great cathedrals of 
France. Some of the loveliest poems and hymns of the middle 
ages were inspired by her. Artists lavished their utmost skill 
in portraying this ideal mother. It came to be the accepted be¬ 
lief that she had been born without the taint of original sin 
(the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception). To the thousands 
upon thousands of priests and monks, who had cut themselves 
off from feminine society, the Blessed Virgin represented ideal 
womanhood. To her they could freely pour forth their utmost 
devotion. To the ordinary man Mary symbolized Love, an 
aspect of Christianity for which all human hearts yearn but 
which was overshadowed in the mediaeval mind, all too often, 
by the aspects of Justice and Fear. 

Extent of the Clerical Order 

But the church in the middle ages was much more than a 
church. The clerical order included not only the priesthood 
but many other kinds of folk whom we would not classify as 
clergy to-day. All monks, nuns, and friars were classed as clerics; 
and it is estimated that in the thirteenth century the number 
of these “religious ”, as they were called, exceeded half a million. 
Moreover, all the professional classes were clergy in those days, 
being in minor orders at least. The whole body of civil servants 
in the administrative departments of the European monarchies, 
the diplomatic service, the secretaries, bookkeepers, and ac¬ 
countants of the nobility, the whole lawyer class, all teachers, 
the entire body of students, and many other sorts and condi¬ 
tions of men were of the clerical order. Fundamentally, the 
reason why the professional classes were drawn from the clergy 
was that the clergy was the only educated class. It was the rar¬ 
est thing for a layman to be able to write his own name. When 
he “signed ” his name he really signed it, making a cross, as the 
illiterate person still does. Nor could the laity read. In the Eng¬ 
lish courts of justice when an accused person sought to establish 
his claim to belong to the clerical order he was called on by the 
judge to read from the Latin Bible, spread open before him. 
If the accused could read three consecutive words he was ad¬ 
judged to have made good his claim. 


THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 385 


The Church as a State 

Moreover, in many senses of the word the mediaeval church 
was a state. It claimed all persons as its subjects. It taxed them, 
judged them, and commanded them. It controlled their educa¬ 
tion. It cared for the poor and promoted public health. It 
sought to direct public opinion. Better organized and more 
efficiently administered than the feudal states with which it 
competed, the church, in the thirteenth century, seemed to be 
creating in the hearts of its subjects a sort of “ecclesiastical 
patriotism ” which bade fair to transcend the local attachment 
men might feel for their feudal overlords, their gilds, or their 
towns. “Never in history have the moral forces of so vast a 
society been so thoroughly concentrated and so effective. As 
an experiment in practical idealism it is still without an equal.” 1 

Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction 

The authority which the church regularly exercised over its 
subjects was displayed in the ecclesiastical courts. A system 
of courts had been set up in each diocese, staffed by clergy who 
were learned in the law and headed by the archdeacon. With 
regular sessions, an elaborate code of law, and provision for ap¬ 
peal all the way up to the papal Curia , the ecclesiastical courts 
were well known to every man and woman in western Europe. 
The jurisdiction of these courts may be compared to the juris¬ 
diction of our own Federal courts. That is, they claimed full 
jurisdiction over certain persons, no matter what the cases, 
and full jurisdiction in certain cases no matter who the persons. 
The “certain persons ” were, of course, the clergy. The whole 
clerical order constituted a privileged class, not amenable to 
the ordinary law of the land. Mere announcement of intention 
to take orders was deemed sufficient proof of inclusion in this 
privileged order. Crusaders and pilgrims were accounted mem¬ 
bers of the clerical order for the time being. 

The whole of the laity were also made amenable to the church 
courts in some matters. Innocent III affirmed that such matters 
included “all that pertains to the salvation or damnation of the 

1 A. C. Krey, American Historical Review , XXVIII, 7. 


386 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


soul.” More specifically, the church courts claimed all cases 
arising out of marriage, because marriage was a sacrament. 
Such cases included suits over rights to dowry and breach of 
promise, as well as for invalidation of the marriage contract. 
Further, the church claimed all cases involving wills. A testator 
might leave a bequest to a church or chapel for the good of his 
soul. The church courts began to claim jurisdiction in such 
cases in order to see to it that such bequests were carried out. 
From this beginning grew the full jurisdiction over all cases 
involving wills. Indeed, the interest of the church in wills be¬ 
came inordinate. Here is the substance of a list of instructions 
to parish priests drawn up by a mediaeval bishop in England. 
Exhort your parishioners, he wrote, especially the rich, four 
times a year, to make their wills whilst in health, for the sake 
of peace and quietness of mind in sickness; exhort the sick to 
make their wills in time; have pen and ink ready and carry a 
“form ” will with you on visits to the sick; urge your parishion¬ 
ers to leave their property to the necessary works of God, to 
the poor, the parish church, forgotten tithes, highways and 
bridges, orphans, poor prisoners, etc. 1 

There were also offenses of an ecclesiastical or moral nature 
over which the church courts claimed jurisdiction. These were 
simony, blasphemy, sacrilege, adultery, perjury, heresy, slander, 
usury, and others of like character. Cases involving an oath 
fell in this class also, since taking an oath meant calling God 
to witness. 

Canon Law 

The penalties of the ecclesiastical courts included fines, 
confiscation of property, penance, degradation, imprisonment, 
whipping, boycott, excommunication, and, in the case of a secu¬ 
lar prince, the interdict and deposition. The shedding of blood 
was forbidden to ecclesiastical authorities, who therefore favored 
burning as a mode of capital punishment. Even this form of 
execution had to be undertaken by the secular authorities, to 
whom the victim was handed over by the church. The law ad¬ 
ministered in the ecclesiastical courts was the Canon Law. This 

1 Frere and Kennedy, Visitation Acts, I, index s.v. “wills”. 


THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 387 


was a vast body of law which had developed from small begin¬ 
nings. Its foundation was the Bible, with the commentaries 
of the Fathers. Church Councils and the popes had added their 
decretals. Great lawyers made repeated codifications of the 
law of the church, borrowing copiously from Roman law to fill 
in the gaps. The most famous of these codifications were those 
of Gratian (the Decretum, c. 1150), and Raymond of Penna- 
forte (c. 1250). 

The States of the Church 

We have seen that the mediaeval church resembled a state in 
its claim to some jurisdiction over all persons and to entire juris¬ 
diction over some persons. The church was a state, also, in a 
more direct sense. In central Italy, and stretching northward 
along the Adriatic to include Ravenna, lay the States of the 
Church. These were ruled by the pope in full sovereignty. This 
sovereignty had been disputed at times by the emperor and by 
the citizens of the papal capital; but the papal claim had always 
been reestablished and it became better consolidated as time 
went on. The establishment and maintenance of such a princi¬ 
pality was the logical result of the papal position. As the head of 
an international church, which was also in some degree an inter¬ 
national state, the pope must have his seat in a capital where he 
could be an independent sovereign, not subject to the control 
in any degree of any other prince or potentate. 

Innocent, the Overlord of Europe 

But the claim of the papacy to temporal sovereignty did not 
rest upon its possession of the States of the Church alone. It 
also claimed the right to call the princes of Europe to account 
and, if the case required it, to depose them. In the case of some 
of the feudal states of Europe this generalized claim to over¬ 
lordship developed into the more definite and familiar relation¬ 
ship of lord and vassal. 

In the actual exercise of temporal power the papacy reached 
its height in the pontificate of Innocent III. We have already 
explored his relations with the Mediaeval Empire, over which 
Innocent claimed and actually secured dominance. In his strug- 


388 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


gle with King John of England Innocent emerged as feudal 
overlord, as we shall see. He also received, specifically and di¬ 
rectly, the oath of homage of King Pedro of Aragon and of King 
Sancho of Portugal. Former popes had established their claims 
to the feudal overlordship of Naples and Sicily and Innocent 
succeeded to this. Pope Innocent’s letters, some six thousand 
of which survive, are filled with admonitions to reform and 
threats of punishment addressed to the various feudal kings 
and princes of Europe. 

Philip II of France had married a Danish princess, in 1193, 
but conceiving a dislike for her he persuaded the French bishops 
to annul the marriage; whereupon he married again. This 
trifling with the marriage sacrament Innocent could not coun¬ 
tenance. He laid France under an interdict. Philip stubbornly 
refused to be disciplined and the contest dragged on for years. 
Finally, in 1213, the pope won his point and Philip received the 
Danish princess as his wife, according her, after twenty years, 
full honors as queen. 

The king of Leon was excommunicated by Innocent III for 
marrying his cousin, and his kingdom was placed under an inter¬ 
dict. The rulers of Denmark, Bohemia, Hungary, Serbia, and 
Bulgaria were also subjected to the pope’s authority in one way 
or another. Thus the pope came near to realizing the papal 
ideal of a world-state based upon righteousness and backed by 
adequate power, physical as well as spiritual. Innocent’s claim 
to sit in judgment upon the princes of the world is clearly set 
forth in his well known metaphor of the sun and the moon. 
“As God placed two great lights in the starry heavens, a greater 
light to preside by day and a lesser to preside by night, so he 
established in the realm of the Universal Church two great 
powers, one to rule the souls of men and one to rule their bodies. 
As the moon, inferior in size and quality, draws its light from 
the sun, so the royal power derives its splendor from the 
priestly.” 

The Three Great Weapons of the Papacy 

In enforcing his claim to world supremacy Innocent relied 
chiefly upon three weapons, alk spiritual. The first was excom- 


THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 389 


munication, through which a recalcitrant prince could be denied 
the privileges of the church. The ceremony of excommunication 
“by bell, book, and candle ” was most solemn; it must have been 
altogether terrifying to the faithful who were summoned to 
hear it pronounced. Lighted candles were dashed to the ground 
as a symbol that the soul of the excommunicated person was 
lost. All Christians were forbidden to associate with the ex¬ 
communicate or to give him aid and comfort in any way. 

Political pressure of this sort could be greatly increased 
through the interdict. This applied to the land and people owing 
allegiance to an excommunicated prince. Throughout the realm 
of such a prince the churches were closed and the church bells 
were silent. The administration of all the sacraments except 
baptism, penance, and extreme unction was suspended. The 
dead could not be buried in consecrated ground. In the “Age 
of Faith ” such a “ lockout ” must have been the cause of much 
anguish and distress to the people; the interdict was thus a rudi¬ 
mentary appeal to public opinion. Finally, the papacy assumed 
the right to depose a prince. Sentence of deposition released 
subjects from their oaths of homage and allegiance. Deposition 
was usually followed by the naming of a successor to the deposed 
prince and the proclamation of a crusade against him. 

The Nature of Heresy 

Throughout the middle ages there were those who criticized 
the church and even rebelled against its authority. Criticism 
along certain lines was permitted by the church, if not welcomed. 
There was no more severe critic of the evil lives of the clergy 
than Innocent III, for example. It was held, however, that a 
priest who had been properly ordained might administer the 
sacraments validly even if he were a man of evil life. What the 
church would not tolerate was denial of its claim to be the sole 
means of salvation and criticism of its pronouncements in mat¬ 
ters of faith and morals. 

Criticism of the latter sort had been common enough while 
the doctrines of the church were still in the formative stage. 
Once its formative period was over and its organization was 
completed and its doctrines elaborated and clarified, the church’s 


390 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


attitude hardened toward those who doubted. Doubters were 
errant children to be converted if at all possible and so recon¬ 
ciled to the church; but if they persisted in error they were to 
be dealt with as wolves in the fold. In a word, they must be 
officially branded as heretics and exterminated. 

The Intellectual Heretics 

Among the many men of heretical views or heretical tenden¬ 
cies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries we may distinguish, 
first, a group of intellectuals. They were the product of the 
twelfth century renascence. Western Europe was then in stimu¬ 
lating contact with the Mohammedan world, in Spain, in Sicily, 
and in the Near East. Oriental ideas as well as Oriental goods 
were being hawked about Europe. The more eager minds of 
the West were especially fascinated by the rationalism of the 
Saracen scientists. We must set down, also, as a source of in¬ 
tellectual heresy the atmosphere of disillusion and cynicism 
which was engendered by the failure of the first Crusades. Tak¬ 
ing as authoritative the doctrines of the church, now formulated, 
the twelfth century thinkers undertook to give them a basis in 
reason, much as a student attempts to “ prove ”, i.e., to demon¬ 
strate, a proposition in geometry. Being permitted by the 
church, and even encouraged, to think, the scholars kept right 
on thinking. 

The earlier of the intellectual heretics were not so much here¬ 
tics as men of heretical tendencies. The distinction was vital 
for them, however academic it may seem to us. Berenger of 
Tours (d. 1088), the brightest mind in the cathedral schools 
of his time, turned his thought to the doctrine of transubstan- 
tiation. One’s reason tells one, he said, that the bread and wine 
are not transformed into Body and Blood but remain bread 
and wine as they actually appear to be. When faced with the 
philosophical distinction between “substance ” and “accidents ” 
Berenger replied that it did not seem to him to be reasonable. 
Other thinkers made a similar attack on the doctrine of predes¬ 
tination. More searching than any of the others in his question¬ 
ing, however, was Abelard. He held that doubt was an asset 
in the search for truth, and that unquestioning faith was a lia- 


THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 391 


bility. At St. Bernard’s insistence Abelard was forbidden by 
the church to teach, but he was never formally adjudged a here¬ 
tic, and such indeed he was not. Abelard merely suggested that 
if one chose to think he should think clearly. 

More dangerous than the living Abelard was the dead Aris¬ 
totle. Late in the twelfth century some of his works were filter¬ 
ing through into western Europe. Aristotle taught that matter 
was eternal. This gave the lie to the story of Creation. He 
taught that there was a common soul for all humanity, whence 
all come and to which all return. This denied the doctrine of 
personal immortality. In vain did ecclesiastical authorities 
prohibit his books and forbid his teaching; there was no sup¬ 
pressing either. Aristotle’s rationalism engendered a like ration¬ 
alism in the minds of many men in the thirteenth century. 
“Why was light created on the first day, and the stars on the 
fourth? Why was the moon called one of the two great lights, 
since it is smaller than any of the planets? Why were birds and 
reptiles said to issue from the water, and quadrupeds from the 
land? ” 1 

Criticism of Clerical Wealth and Corruption 

There was also a group of out and out heretics who attacked 
the church because of its wealth and display and condemned 
the clergy for their indolence and their immorality. Many of 
these critics were not only sincere, they were friendly to the 
church, wishing only to recall it to higher standards through a 
revival of religion. 

That there were grave abuses in the church could not be de¬ 
nied. Innocent III in a sermon to the clergy charged some of 
them with keeping shameless women in their houses, with re¬ 
fusing to bury a man unless he bequeathed them one-third of 
his goods, and with consorting with the nobility and dressing 
showily. “We are far from imitating Him Who said ‘Learn of 
me for I am meek and lowly in spirit.’ The corruption of the 
people,” he concluded, “has its chief source in the clergy.” A 
popular expression of the hostility to the clergy then current 
appears in the proverb, “I’d rather be a priest than do that.” 

1 Thompson, The Middle Ages , II, 784. 


392 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


This sentiment received a fuller expression in the following 
proverb: “He who would live a day in delight, let him cook a 
hen; for two days, a goose; for a whole week, a pig; for a whole 
month, an ox. If he will be happy a whole year, let him take a 
wife; but if he would live in pleasure his whole life long, he must 
take to the priesthood.” Such sentiments found special favor 
in the cities of southern France and northern Italy, whose in¬ 
habitants were very busy with the affairs of this world and were 
beginning to be very much in love with life. 

The Waldensians 

An occasion for cynicism to some, the corruption of the clergy 
was to others a matter of sorrowful concern. Among the latter 
was Peter Waldo, a wealthy merchant of Lyons. He became 
convinced that a return to the primitive poverty and simplicity 
of the early Christians was the cure for corruption, and he de¬ 
termined to set the example himself. He sold everything he 
had and gave all the proceeds to the poor. He then began to 
preach his message of poverty and a good life to whoever would 
listen. Gradually a few like-minded men attached themselves 
to Peter Waldo, and they began to be known in the other towns 
of southern France to which they went as the “Poor Men of 
Lyons ”. Coming into conflict with the local authorities, the 
new “order ” was sanctioned by the pope, in 1170, on condition 
that the “Poor Men” subordinate themselves to the local clergy. 
Conflict between the Poor Men and the clergy was thus made 
inevitable. From the beginning the Poor Men had been out¬ 
spoken in their criticism of the low moral standards of the 
clergy, and they became increasingly so. Their preaching and 
their practice of poverty were an offense to the clergy. Warm¬ 
ing to their work, the Waldensian preachers began to broadcast 
doctrines gravely heretical. The Bible was the all-sufficient 
guide to religious truth, they said. Further, any good man has 
the inherent capacity to interpret the Bible for himself and to 
preach to others; and still more drastically, any good man can 
be a priest and administer the sacraments. Conversely, an or¬ 
dained priest cannot lawfully exercise the functions of a priest 
if he is a bad man. 


THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 393 


These teachings struck at the foundations of the church and 
were rank heresy. The Waldensian doctrines were officially 
condemned at the Council of Venice in 1184. They spread rap¬ 
idly and widely none the less, for there was much fertile soil. 
Waldensians became numerous in Spain, Germany, Bohemia, 
and Hungary. Under persecution numbers diminished but the 
Waldensians did not disappear. Two hundred years after the 
death of Peter Waldo his doctrines inspired the Hussite heresy 
and revolt in Bohemia. And in the mountain valleys of Pied¬ 
mont the Waldensians, persecuted through the centuries, still 
survive. 


The Albigensians 

Like the Waldensians in attacking the priesthood, but carry¬ 
ing their opposition to much greater lengths, were the Albigen¬ 
sians, the most famous heretics of the middle ages. The town 
of Albi was a prosperous city of Toulouse and has been noted 
as the center of the textile industry in the south of France. In 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Toulouse was one of the 
most prosperous and highly civilized areas of Europe. Here 
heresy found fertile soil. This particular brand, so outlandish 
in its tenets, so Oriental in its philosophy, has moved to wonder 
a succession of grave historians. What was its origin and, still 
more mystifying, how came it to take root in southern France? 
Much is now clear, though much remains obscure. It is agreed 
that the Albigensian heresy was derived from the Paulician 
church of Armenia, which still maintains its independent status 
among the age-old communities of Christendom, and that the 
doctrines of this church passed westward through the Balkans. 
Bulgarian bishops journeyed to Toulouse in 1167 to attend a 
General Council of the adherents of this faith. 

The principal dogma of the Albigensians was the inherent 
evil of the material world about us. The lord of this world is 
Satan. Life is an eternal warfare between Satan and God. Both 
are struggling for the soul of man. Satan’s main weapon is sex. 
Hence the man who wishes to be Perfect must not marry; nor 
may he eat anything produced through sex, such as eggs, milk, 
and cheese. Indeed, the Perfect lived a life of extreme and even 


394 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


morbid asceticism. The Albigensians were often called the 
Cathari, a word meaning “the Pure ”, or “the Puritans The 
Cathari taught that only a few could hope to become Perfect in 
one life, and they prescribed a way of life for the common man 
which was much less austere. The Perfect soul, at death, 
assumed a celestial body. Thus the Cathari denied that there 
was a physical resurrection. The soul of a lost person, at 
death, entered the body of some animal, probably the one he 
resembled most in life. It follows, from this, that all Albigen¬ 
sians were vegetarians. There could be no Hell or Purgatory, 
for it was impossible to conceive of anything worse than this 
world. We get some light on the Albigensian teaching from the 
formal denial of a man accused of being one of them. To clear 
himself he swore that “he had a wife and children, ate meat, 
lied and swore, and was a faithful Christian ”. 1 

Doctrines like these are heretical enough, but they scarcely 
explain the wide popularity of the Cathari in the south of France. 
To understand this we must note that the count of Toulouse 
and his feudal nobility were already enemies of the clergy and 
jealous of their wealth. Count Raymond VI was a little “king 
of culture ”. His court was not only brilliant but licentious. 
The count openly kept three wives at the same time. Further, 
the common people, especially in the many prosperous towns of 
Languedoc, had no affection for the clergy. To them the Cathari 
offered a more comfortable religion than the terrifying fulmina- 
tions of the mediaeval church. 

By 1200 the population of Toulouse was “in almost universal 
revolt from Latin Christianity”. Innocent III was alarmed 
and sent a papal legate to Toulouse. The legate could make 
little headway, however, though he placed Count Raymond 
under excommunication. Shortly after that the legate (Peter 
of Castelnau) was murdered. A Spanish priest, visiting Tou¬ 
louse about this time, was so horrified by the evidences of heresy 
that he resolved to devote his life to bringing the lost sheep 
back to the fold, founding for that purpose the famous order of 
preaching Friars, the Dominicans. Innocent III, however, felt 
that the situation was too desperate to wait upon the slow 

1 Cambridge Mediaeval History , VI, 705-706. 


THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 395 


processes of evangelism. He proclaimed a crusade. There fol¬ 
lowed the Albigensian Wars, “the most notorious example of 
sustained and successful persecution in history”. 1 They were 
waged with savage destructiveness and frightful cruelty. Those 
who responded to the call for a crusade were chiefly feudal no¬ 
bility and their followers from the north of France, encouraged 
by the French monarchy. The importance of the Albigensian 
Wars is, indeed, rather more political than religious, and they 
will be considered more fully when we come to the study of the 
growth of France. Suffice it to say that the heresy was stamped 
out, or rather, burned out as with a hot iron. 

The Inquisition 

It remains to be noted that out of its experience with heretics 
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the church learned how 
to deal with them in an organized way. Formerly, heresy had 
been dealt with by the local bishops in their regular courts, like 
any other ecclesiastical offense. Then the popes began ap¬ 
pointing special judges as associates of the bishops, especially 
charged to deal with heresy. The first permanent judges or 
“inquisitors ” were appointed by Gregory IX, in 1233, who thus 
became the founder of the Inquisition. 

We should remember that an inquisitor was first of all a mis¬ 
sionary. His object was to reconcile heretics, to restore the lost 
sheep to the fold. Inquisitors were picked men of a high type, 
usually Franciscans or Dominicans. If persuasion succeeded 
and the heretic recanted a sufficient penance was imposed, 
which might be imprisonment for a term, even for life, often 
enough in a dungeon closed to light and air. If persuasion failed, 
the church confessed the failure by handing the victim over to 
the civil authorities. Death at the stake followed—terrible 
enough but scarcely as terrible as the dungeon for life. 

The methods used in the courts of the Inquisition are famous, 
even notorious, but they seem logical enough, granted certain 
fundamental assumptions. The name of an informer was kept 
from the accused with a view to protecting the informer. Coun¬ 
sel was not allowed the accused because it was deemed heresy 

1 Ibid., p. 717. 


396 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


to aid a heretic. “ Third degree ” methods were employed be¬ 
cause it was common knowledge that Satan was aiding the here¬ 
tic with all his wiles. The use of torture seems less logical, and 
according to law torture might not be “repeated However, 
it could be “ continued ”, the effect, one would suppose, being 
the same. Further to safeguard the use of torture, it was pro¬ 
vided that a confession must be “voluntary ”. Admissions made 
under torture, therefore, had to be “confirmed” three days 
later. It should be noted, finally, that the Inquisition was 
never established in England and that in Germany it appeared 
only in certain parts. Into Scandinavia and eastern Europe it 
did not enter at all. 

The Golden Age of Monasticism 

It is natural that in those centuries when the church domi¬ 
nated the minds of men most completely monasticism should 
reach its greatest development. The twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries have been called the “golden age of monasticism”. 
It was freely recognized that the older orders, in growing 
wealthy, had lost sympathetic contact with the needs of society. 
No revulsion against monasticism took place, however; quite 
the contrary. The remedy for the evils of monasticism was 
more monasticism. Even so it is thought to-day that the rem¬ 
edy for the failures of democracy is more democracy. 1 Further, 
the evils which impelled men like Peter Waldo to active revolt 
from the church impelled others to the quiet austerities of mo¬ 
nastic life. Thus they sought to counterbalance corruption 
with asceticism. In this sense, then, the answer to twelfth cen¬ 
tury heretics was the Cistercians and the answer to thirteenth 
century heretics was the friars. 

The Cisteecians 

The Cistercian order was founded at Citeaux, near Dijon, Bur¬ 
gundy, in 1098. This region was also the home of Cluny, as we 
have seen. Cluny had now grown wealthy and aristocratic. Her 
monastic buildings and churches were splendid structures, elab- 

1 Suggested by Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle 
Ages , p. 603. 


THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 397 


orately decorated and quite comfortable. Learning and the 
arts were cultivated in the Cluniac abbeys, and the physical 
forms of monastic austerity had been abandoned. The Cister¬ 
cian Order represents a revival of the stark ascetic impulse. The 
monks were mostly of the peasant class. They performed the 
heavy manual labor of the fields. They ate no meat, eggs, fish, 
or butter. They wore only the coarsest woollen clothing. Their 
cells were bare and comfortless, their chapels plain, and their 
services simple. Furthermore, the Cistercians invariably planted 
their houses in the most desolate and inaccessible places they 
could find. Citeaux itself was in a swamp. In the realm of 
monasticism, then, the Cistercians represented a Puritan re¬ 
action, a phenomenon familiar enough in the history of organ¬ 
ized religion. 

The Cistercian emphasis upon plain living and unremitting 
toil had an important economic effect in the history of Europe. 
The Cistercians were agricultural pioneers par excellence , drain¬ 
ing swamps and reclaiming land. In the Low Countries they 
won much land from the sea. In Germany Cistercian houses 
were founded along the new frontier beyond the Elbe. There 
the monks worked at clearing the land, building roads and 
bridges, and taming the rivers. It is interesting to note 
that the older Benedictine monasteries kept to the “Old West” 
in Germany while the Cistercians pioneered in the “New 
East ”. 

The Cistercians used their brains as well as their hands. In 
other words, they became scientific farmers. They practically 
re-created the science of forestry. They practiced plant experi¬ 
mentation and made a scientific study of soils. On this basis they 
proceeded to specialize in certain fruits and cereals. They also 
took up scientific stock-breeding. Developing a superior breed 
of sheep in England, the Cistercian houses there practically 
abandoned the cultivation of the soil for sheep-raising and were 
thus an important factor in a change in English life so impor¬ 
tant as to be termed an “economic revolution ”. It should be 
noted that the economic emphasis of the Cistercians led to a 
neglect of other monastic features like missionary work and 
social relief. 


398 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


St. Bernard of Clairvaux 

The greatest of the Cistercians, and the man to whom the 
order owed most of its early success, was Bernard of Clairvaux 
(1090-1153), a saint, and the greatest monk of the middle ages. 
A nobleman’s son, Bernard turned from the fashionable life of 
his day to cast his lot with the new order. Even the austerities 
of the early Cistercians did not satisfy him. Before he was thirty 
he had succeeded in wrecking an excellent constitution by an 
excess of toil, fasting, and loss of sleep. Bernard rose rapidly 
in the order, becoming abbot of a new house at Clairvaux. The 
new abbot proceeded to make himself the foremost figure in 
Europe, healing a papal schism, launching a Crusade, silencing 
the great Abelard, and playing a leading role in every great 
movement of his times. His outlook on the world was remark¬ 
ably narrow for so able a man; doubtless he kept it so deliber¬ 
ately. One of his most attractive traits was his mysticism, of 
which we catch glimpses in certain hymns he wrote, especially 
in the one which begins, 

“ Jesus, the very thought of thee 
With sweetness fills my breast, 

But sweeter far Thy face to see 
And in Thy presence rest.” 

Other Monastic Orders 

The ascendancy of the monastic ideal in the twelfth century 
is revealed not only in the rise of a mighty order like the Cis¬ 
tercians but also in the appearance of many smaller ones, such 
as the order of Vallombrosa, in northern Italy, and that of the 
Carthusians in France. In both of these there was a renewed 
emphasis upon certain features of monasticism long familiar. 
The twelfth century also saw an extension of the monastic ideal 
to include at least a part of the priesthood itself. The priest’s 
work necessarily kept him in daily contact with the world. Fur¬ 
ther, it was not practicable for the ordinary priest to govern 
his daily life in accordance with a monastic rule. Groups of 
priests, however, as in a cathedral Chapter or in a large church 


THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 399 


served by many priests, might, while fulfilling their usual duties, 
live together according to a self-imposed rule. Several orders of 
“canons regular”, as such priests were called, appeared in the 
twelfth century. Some adopted a rule originally drawn up for 
the clergy of his cathedral by St. Augustine. They were known 
as the Austin canons. Another such order was the Premon- 
stratensians, founded in 1120 by Norbert of Xanten at Pre- 
montre, near Laon. 


The Friars 

Early in the thirteenth century there appeared an entirely 
new expression of the monastic ideal in the Friars. There were 
several such orders, known popularly as White Friars, Black 
Friars, and Grey Friars, from the color of their garb. Other 
names applied to them were “Barefoot Friars” and “Begging 
Friars ”. These new orders were not rural but urban, being 
indeed an aspect of the town life so rapidly rising in western 
Europe. Furthermore, they lived not by labor but by begging. 
The old orders had emphasized retirement from active life in the 
world and preoccupation with personal salvation. The new 
orders deliberately planted themselves in the heart of the busiest 
communities and sought to make themselves socially useful. 
Mediaeval towns had grown rapidly. Increase of population had 
not always been met by multiplication of parishes. Thousands of 
folk in the towns of northern Italy and elsewhere were literally 
unchurched. Further, social problems, like housing, sanitation, 
public health, and pauperism, were made acute by overcrowd¬ 
ing and by the haphazard fashion in which mediaeval towns 
had grown. The need of the cities was the opportunity of the 
friars. 


St. Francis 

St. Francis has been called the finest Christian of the middle 
ages, and indeed the only Christian since Christ. Born in Assisi, 
in 1181 or 1182, he was the son of a prosperous merchant en¬ 
gaged in the trade between northern Italy and the south of 
France, whence, doubtless, Francis drew his name. From the 
south of France, also, the young Francis drew inspiration. The 


400 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


ideas which were in the background of the Waldensian and Albi- 
gensian heresies, such as the evil of property and the need for a 
return to primitive Christianity, “came streaming into north¬ 
ern Italy, over the Alps, along the coast, across the sea.” Francis 
grew up to be a gay young man about town, eager, pleasure- 
loving, and exceedingly attractive. He took part in the inter¬ 
municipal wars of the times, in the service of his native city, 
and was captured by the enemy. Sick and in prison, the thoughts 
of the gay youth were turned to serious things, as it proved, 
permanently. 

Home again at length, Francis found his former mode of life 
distasteful. His “ con version ” was a gradual affair, however, 
during which he found it necessary to resist the authority of his 
bishop and to quarrel with his father. Both of those worthies 
were gravely perturbed by the serious youth who embraced 
poverty as a bride and kissed lepers. On February 24, 1208, 
while in church, the idea of a new order came to St. Francis in 
the words of the Gospel for the day: “As ye go, preach, saying, 
The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the 
lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, 
freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your 
purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither 
shoes, nor yet staves; for the workman is worthy of his meat.” 
(Matthew X, 7-10.) From that moment Francis sought to follow 
the Gospel literally and to persuade others to do so. 

At first he met with scoffing and jeering; the townsfolk 
thought he had gone mad. This attitude soon changed, however. 
Disciples were made, and the order was recognized by the pope. 
Francis wanted the order to remain simple and small, with 
little huts and little churches. More and more he became pure 
spirit, finding comrades in the wind, the fire, the flowers, and 
the birds, to which he preached sermons and wrote verses and 
sang. There was nothing of the gloomy ascetic about Francis. 
He was a preacher of glad tidings, full of the joy of the Lord. 
So completely had Francis merged his own spirit with that of 
the Saviour, we are told, that the wounds of Christ appeared as 
stigmata in his body. He died in 1226 and was canonized in 
1228. 


THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH AT ITS HEIGHT 401 


Growth of the Franciscan Order 

The order founded by St. Francis grew enormously, spread¬ 
ing throughout western Europe. Franciscans were zealous mis¬ 
sionaries also. By 1300 they were well established in China, 
with an archbishopric at Peking. The New Testament was 
translated into the Tartar tongue. However, the fall of the 
Mongol Empire, the rise of the Turks, and the ravages of the 
Black Death in Europe brought this promising enterprise to an 
end. With the great growth of the order came increasing com¬ 
plexity of organization. Men of high organizing ability came 
to the front and the ideals of the gentle St. Francis faded more 
and more into the background. There were repeated movements 
within the order to hark back to St. Francis, however. Sects 
like the Spiritual Franciscans and the Franciscan Observants 
were the outgrowth of such movements. 

St. Dominic and the Dominicans 

St. Dominic was born in Calervega, Castile, in 1170. His 
parents sent him to the local university where he was trained 
in the arts and in theology. Ordained a priest, he became a 
canon and accompanied his bishop on a visit to Toulouse in 
1205. Here, as we have seen, Dominic was gravely troubled 
by the heresy so widely prevalent. He remained for some years, 
preaching to the heretics and seeking to win their return to 
the fold by setting an example of self-forgetting devotion. He 
was thus led to adopt poverty, and he went up and down the 
streets of the towns of Toulouse, barefoot and living on alms. 
Other preachers gathered round him. In 1216 the “ Dominican 
Order of the Friars Preacher ”, a name which Innocent III is 
said to have suggested, was recognized. Like the Franciscans 
the Dominican Order spread rapidly through western Europe. 

With so many features in common, the two orders never¬ 
theless differ greatly. The Dominicans emphasized the intellect. 
“The training of a Dominican was long and arduous. He was 
thoroughly grounded in scripture, in theology, and in canon 
law, and carefully trained as a speaker. He was made into an 
accomplished Latinist, though eloquent also in use of the ver- 


402 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


nacular, whereas the Franciscans knew little Latin and were 
indifferent to education. The pride of a Dominican house was 
its library; the pride of a Franciscan house was its sick-ward.” 1 
For a century most of the greatest thinkers and teachers in the 
universities of Europe were Dominicans. They maintained an 
elaborate system of schools, passing the brightest pupils along 
from the lower schools to those higher up. We shall learn more 
of the work of the Dominicans when we take up the study of 
mediaeval universities. 

For Further Reading 

Cambridge Mediaeval History, V, chap. 20; VI, chaps. 1, 16, 19, 20, 
and 21 

J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 
chap. 24 

S. R. Packard, Europe and the Church under Innocent III 

H. 0. Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind, vol. I, Bk. Ill 

S. Baldwin, The Organization of Mediaeval Christianity 

P. Sabatier, Life of St. Francis of Assisi 

Little Flowers of St. Francis. Everyman’s Library 

B. Jarrett, Life of St. Dominic 

J. Herkless, Francis and Dominic and the Mendicant Orders 
J. Dodd, History of Canon Law 

E. L. Cutts, Parish Priests and their People in the Middle Ages in 
England 

E. Comba, History of the Waldmses 

H. C. Lea, History of the Inquisition, 3 vols. 

Comte de Montalembert, Monks of the West 
A. Luchaire, Innocent III, 6 vols. 

Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 vols. 

1 Thompson, The Middle Ages, II, 673. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 


MEDIEVAL LEARNING; THE UNIVERSITIES 

“From the end of the fifth to the close of the fifteenth century 
Europe had its Dark Ages. Civilization slept; it was the mid¬ 
night of progress.” Thus did an undergraduate “Orator of the 
Day” begin his address with a sentence which he fondly hoped 
was sonorous, and which certainly is fallacious. The lamp of 
learning was never extinguished in the middle ages, though its 
flame flickered and grew dim in the earlier centuries. But it 
remained alight, to glow again in the thirteenth century as 
brightly as in the Age of Pericles. Mediaeval learning was truly 
mediaeval, with distinctive features of its own. Its body of 
factual knowledge was mostly borrowed; but mediaeval men^ 
displayed great individuality in their use of facts. New methods 
of teaching and learning were developed in the middle ages, 
from which our modern methods have come. The universities, 
unknown to the Greeks and the Romans, were the invention of 
mediaeval man. 

Learning in the Early Middle Ages 

% 

The Roman government had maintained schools of rhetoric, 
as we have seen. Their curriculum was the seven liberal arts, 
a number quite the fashion in the ancient world, whether the 
subjects were liberal arts or deadly sins. The German invaders 
despised education, holding that a boy who had tamely sub¬ 
mitted to the rod of the schoolmaster would shrink from the 
javelin of the foe. The German kings did not keep up the 
Roman schools. An educated clergy was essential to the church, 
however, and grammar schools were maintained at the papal 
curia , in most monasteries, and, later on, in some cathedrals. 
In these early church schools the curriculum of the rhetoric 
schools of Rome was continued. The seven arts were divided 
into a quadrivium of grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, and arithme- 

403 


404 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


tic, and a trivium of music, geometry, and astronomy. All this 
south of the Alps; in the north even the little learning essential 
for reading the Latin service and calculating the date of Easter 
practically died out. 

Though the curriculum of Rome had been taken over by the 
schools of the church, a profound change had none the less oc¬ 
curred. It was a change of spirit and of emphasis. Roman 
schools had prepared youth for public life and the world of 
affairs. Roman education sought, also, to instill an interest in 
science, a love of culture, and a taste for art and literature, in 
the hope that in the midst of a busy life educated men would 
make a “noble use of leisure”. The objective of the church was 
quite different. Her schools were exclusively for the clergy. A 
good hand, a clear but not too ornate Latin style, the ability to 
expound the Scriptures, the development of administrative 
ability, a knowledge of canon law—such were some of the ob¬ 
jectives of the church schools, all severely practical. Culture for 
its own sake was despised; it was not seemly to delight in the 
things of this world. 

Let us see how the seven arts lent themselves to the uses of 
the church. Grammar included a study of the Latin classics, 
the aim being the development of a sound Latin style, not en¬ 
joyment. Rhetoric was deemed useful for the interpretation of 
the Scriptures, especially the allegorical parts. Dialectic was 
chiefly logic, and logic was the means by which important 
truths could be deduced from Biblical texts. Arithmetic was 
useful in computing the dates of Easter and other movable feasts. 
Geometry included geography, chiefly of the Holy Lands and of 
celestial realms. Music was useful in the singing of the liturgy. 
Astronomy was practically neglected. Thus all learning was made 
to serve the purposes of the church. “The sword of God’s word 
is forged by grammar, sharpened by logic, and burnished by 
rhetoric; but only theology can use it.” The curriculum just 
outlined changed very little through the mediaeval centuries. 

Cathedral Schools 

We have seen that Charlemagne did much for mediaeval 
education. He brought learning north of the Alps again; every 


MEDIAEVAL LEARNING; THE UNIVERSITIES 405 


cathedral was to establish a school for the clergy. Charlemagne 
also inaugurated a movement for extending education to the 
laity, setting up a palace school to which the sons of nobles 
were admitted. This was an interesting experiment but the 
school did not outlast its founder. The cathedral schools, how¬ 
ever, lived on through the troublous times after Charlemagne 
and gradually raised their standards. Some of the more famous 
cathedral schools were those at Tours, Orleans, Rheims, Char¬ 
tres, Paris, Liege, and Utrecht. These better known schools not 
only served as training schools for the clergy of the local diocese 
but they also drew scholars from distant lands. During the 
eleventh and twelfth centuries the cathedral schools produced 
the greatest scholars of Europe, far surpassing the monastic 
schools, though many monks gave their whole lives to learning. 

Scholasticism 

It was in the cathedral schools that scholasticism was born. 
Scholasticism is defined as “an attempt to justify to the reason 
the dicta of faith.” In other words, let philosophy come to the 
aid of theology and lay a foundation in reason for the dogmas 
of the church. It is significant that the great development of 
scholasticism was contemporary with the establishment of the 
papal monarchy by Pope Gregory VII and his successors and 
with the codification of canon law. The organisation, the law, 
and the theology of the church were assuming their final form. 
It remained only for the scholars to construct a system of 
philosophy to fit the facts, or, as we say, to “rationalize”. 
Once launched on such a project, however, the question was 
sure to arise, what is to be done when a scholar comes upon a 
dogma for which he cannot discover a rational basis? Thus did 
Berenger of Tours question the doctrine of the Mass; other 
scholars doubted the reasonableness of predestination. 

To the question of what to do when in doubt twelfth century 
scholars returned two answers gravely in conflict, the realist and 
the nominalist. The realist view was first clearly stated by 
Anselm (d. 1109), abbot of Bee and archbishop of Canterbury, 
a scholar and a saint. Man learns in two ways, he affirmed, 
through the reason and through faith. If the two are in conflict 


406 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


faith must prevail. Neque enirn qusero intelligere ut credam, sed 
credo ut intelligam. (I do not seek to know to the end that I 
may believe, but I believe that I may know.) We may compare 
with this the Scriptural injunction, “Believe and you will come 
to know.” The nominalist reply to this came from Roscellinus 
of Compiegne (d. 1120), who taught at Tours. He declared that 
reason ought to prevail over faith. Nihil credendum nisi prius 
intellectum, he wrote, which may be freely translated, “Seeing 
is believing.” 

The issue thus joined, other scholars rushed into the lists and 
the whole theory of knowledge was explored. How do we come 
to know anything? Our mental concepts of such common things 
as “book” or “chair”, or the abstract concepts of “God”, 
“the church”, “humanity”—whence came they? Roscellinus, 
fortified by Aristotelian logic, distinguished between a thing 
itself (res) and its name (nomen). How do we come by the mental 
concept “chair”? By experience, he would say; by seeing many 
chairs and by sitting in them. Thus we come to have the con¬ 
cept of “a movable single seat with a back” to which we give 
the name “chair”. The human mind, in the nominalist view, 
proceeds from the particular to the universal. Universalia post 
rem, as the mediaeval scholars put it. We gain knowledge 
through personal experience and observation. “Universals are 
merely a shorthand of thought.” Such was the nominalist view. 

The realists violently dissented from this theory of knowledge. 
Universalia ante rem was their slogan. That is, any particular 
thing which we see and use existed first as an idea. Before ever 
a chair was made it existed as an idea in somebody’s mind. 
Before man was created he existed as an idea in the mind of 
God. Further, any particular man or chair is not the real thing, 
but only a reflection or approximation of the real (or, as we 
would say, the ideal) thing. “Universals are real entities having 
an existence prior to human experience and apart from human 
intelligence” is a good statement of the realist position. 

Abelard 

Greatest of twelfth century nominalists was Abelard (d. 1142). 
He was a native of Brittany and came of good family. Destined 


MEDIAEVAL LEARNING; THE UNIVERSITIES 407 


for the clergy, Abelard passed through several of the famous 
cathedral schools of his day. At Paris he attended the lectures 
of William of Champeaux, a famous realist; young Abelard 
openly challenged the teaching of his professor and completely 
confounded him. Abelard then set up as a lecturer himself, at¬ 
tracting hundreds of students to William’s tens. The method 
of Abelard was to show how inconsistent and illogical were the 
much quoted authorities of the day. In dialectic skill he has 
never been surpassed. It must have been exciting to see Abelard 
in action, as he took up the great masters one by one and 
knocked their heads together. We may catch a little of this ex¬ 
citement even now in a perusal of his famous book, Sic et non. 
Abelard was destructive rather than constructive. Great 
teacher and inspirer of youth though he was, he founded no 
system of philosophy. Further, he had rather too much apprecia¬ 
tion for his own brilliant gifts. As a student he had been over- 
fond of confounding his masters. “The old man”, he wrote of 
one of them, “was a marvel in the eyes of his hearers, but a 
nobody before a questioner. He had a wonderful flow of words, 
but the sense was contemptible and the reasoning abject.” 

Abelard and Heloise 

Probably Abelard is remembered to-day because of Heloise 
rather than for himself. “There has never been a passion be¬ 
tween a man and woman more famous than that which brought 
happiness and sorrow to the lives of Abelard and Heloise”. 1 
Abelard was thirty-six when they met and at the height of his 
fame. Heloise was fifteen, “her face not unfair, and her knowl¬ 
edge unequalled”, as Abelard later testified. The maiden’s 
uncle engaged Abelard to tutor her, gave him quarters in his 
home, and authority to punish his niece in a schoolmasterly 
way. The teacher fell in love with his pupil. “I saw that she 
possessed every attraction that lovers seek; nor did I regard 
my success as doubtful, when I considered my fame and my 
goodly person, and also her love of letters,” Abelard wrote in 
his account of the affair. “Our hours of study were given to 
love. The books lay open, but our words were of love rather 

1 H. O. Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind, II, 29. 


408 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


than philosophy, there were more kisses than aphorisms. . . . 
To avert suspicion [the uncle’s] I struck her occasionally—very 
gentle blows of love.” 1 The inevitable discovery and the uncle’s 
furious rage and shameful revenge on Abelard were the opening 
chapters in a long tragedy. Heloise refused to marry Abelard 
even after the birth of their son, knowing full well that marriage 
would be a bar to the high ecclesiastical preferment which seemed 
the sure reward of Abelard’s fame. Heloise entered a nunnery 
and became an abbess. Her letters to Abelard reveal as pure 
and unselfish a love as it is possible for a woman to have for a 
man. Twenty-one years after Abelard’s death Heloise died at 
the same age, and she was buried in the same grave. 

Importance of the Controversy between Nominalists 
and Realists 

There has been a tendency to belittle the debates of the 
scholastics as being hair-splitting futilities. We are told that 
mediaeval scholars spent too much thought on the problem of 
how many angels can stand on the point of a needle; and that 
they debated the question whether, if Lazarus had left a will,- 
it would have been valid when he was called back to life again, 
without bringing the miracle itself into question. Sir Francis 
Bacon, who was attempting to found a philosophical system of 
his own at the expense of the scholastics, has this to say of 
them. “Having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of 
leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut 
up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle, their dictator), 
as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and 
colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time they 
did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of 
wit spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which are 
extant in their books.” 

To take this view, however, is to miss completely the true 
significance of the controversy between the nominalists and the 
realists. The realists were the fundamentalists and the nom¬ 
inalists the modernists of those times. The realists upheld the 
authority and affirmed the right-to-rule of all existing institu- 

1 Quoted by Taylor* ov. cit. % pp. 30-31. 


MEDIAEVAL LEARNING; THE UNIVERSITIES 409 

tions: whatever is, is right. The papacy and the church, further¬ 
more, were divinely right, having first existed as ideas in the 
mind of God. The nominalists, on the other hand, were oppo¬ 
nents of the powers-that-be. Time was on their side, though 
the realists dominated the middle ages for the most part. The 
eager individualism that marked the later middle ages is an 
aspect of nominalism. Roger Bacon, the great English nominal¬ 
ist and scientist, wrote in the thirteenth century, “One indi¬ 
vidual is worth more than all the universals in the world. . . . 
God has not created the world for the sake of the universal man, 
but for the sake of individual persons.” 1 

The University of Bologna 

The keen interest of twelfth century scholars in theology and 
philosophy was a part of an intellectual awakening which may 
properly be called a “revival of learning”. Students flocked 
to the cathedral schools in unprecedented numbers. Nor were 
theology and philosophy the only things that interested them. 
Western Europe had just come into the possession of a large 
body of new knowledge. The Justinian Code, lost sight of for 
nearly six hundred years, was rediscovered. The works of 
Aristotle were just becoming known through the translations of 
Arabic scholars in Spain, and Euclid’s geometry came to western 
Europe through the same channel. The works of Greek physi¬ 
cians, now available also, laid the foundation of mediaeval 
medicine. A new arithmetic came into use based upon the so- 
called “arabic” numerals, to which Arab mathematicians had 
added the zero. The cathedral and monastic schools, whose 
curriculum had been limited to the seven liberal arts, could ac¬ 
commodate neither the new studies nor the increased number 
of students. The tide of learning overflowed the old banks and 
began to cut new channels. In short, the twelfth century re¬ 
vival of learning led to the founding of universities. 

We may take Bologna and Paris as illustrations of mediaeval 
universities. In both the question of origins is a difficult one. 
There was as yet no technique for the founding of universities. 
Mediaeval universities were founded by men who did not know 

1 Quoted by Thompson, The Middle Ages, II, 776. 


410 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


what they were doing, so to speak; they were merely meeting a 
practical situation in a practical way. Bologna became a center 
for the study of law about 1150. The revival of the study of 
law grew out of the rise of the Lombard communes. Those 
thriving city-states were developing an economic and a political 
system quite at variance with the feudal order of the day and 
not unlike the Roman order of a previous day. A demand arose, 
in the business and political world, for men with a legal training. 

Bologna was on an important crossroads of northern Italy. 
It became a center for students, about the middle of the twelfth 
century, through the fame of a great teacher, Irnerius, who 
lectured on the “Digest” from notes made in the margin of his 
own copy. Students flocked to Bologna from all parts of Italy 
and from beyond the Alps; many of them were mature men, sons 
of nobles and of wealthy merchants. These students were not 
allowed to become citizens of Bologna and were thus quite 
without rights. They were forced to pay high prices for food 
and lodging by shameless profiteering. In disputes with towns¬ 
men the students invariably lost. Following the mediaeval fash¬ 
ion, therefore, the students of Bologna soon organized a gild 
or universitas, a word used for associations of all kinds, and 
chose a rector from their own number. The students 7 association 
was in a position to bargain with the city authorities, its weapon, 
completely effectual, being the threat of migration to some 
other city. The students got what they wanted, namely, the 
right to fix prices, the right to the protection of the law, and 
certain rights of self-government including that of disciplining 
their own members. Such was the first university charter. 

“Victorious over the townsmen, the students turned on their 
other enemies, the professors. 77 The teachers, Irnerius and the 
rest, were entirely dependent upon the fees paid them by the 
students. The “university of students 77 proceeded to bargain 
with the doctors, as they were called, and another set of regula¬ 
tions emerged, which the doctors were sworn to obey. These 
regulations fixed salaries, the number of lectures, the hours of 
instruction, and so on. A doctor had to secure the consent of 
his class and of the student-rector to be absent even for a single 
day. If he wanted to leave town he had to deposit a sum of 


MEDIAEVAL LEARNING; THE UNIVERSITIES 411 


money as a pledge of his prompt return. The doctors had to 
begin their lectures promptly with the bell and close within one 
minute after the bell; the students were pledged to leave the 
lecture halls at once to insure that the hour would end promptly. 
The doctors were fined for omitting matter or for refusing to 
answer questions as and when asked. Furthermore, a schedule 
of progress through the course was drawn up and a doctor was 
fined so much for every day he fell behind the appointed 
schedule. The rector of the university appointed committees of 
students to visit class rooms and report all irregularities. 

This university of students at Bologna was the product of a 
peculiar situation. Even so the students did not have things 
all their own way. The doctors organized too, a “university of 
doctors.” They established a monopoly of the right to teach, 
to set examinations, and to grant licenses to teach. These 
licenses were the earliest degrees. Those admitted to the prac¬ 
tice of teaching were called doctors, very much as we use the 
title in the case of those admitted to the practice of medicine. 

Bologna remained a school of law exclusively for nearly two 
centuries. Besides Roman law canon law was taught there also. 
Gratian, an Italian monk who had made, about 1140, a digest 
of canon law called the Decretum, taught at Bologna. It was 
thus possible to study both laws and even to become a doctor 
of both laws. 1 Officially chartered as a school of law in 1158, 
Bologna established faculties of arts and medicine in 1316 and 
of theology in 1360. In organisation, Bologna was the model 
which was followed by other universities in Italy, the south of 
France, and in Spain. Student control is an important factor in 
the life of the universities of Spain and Italy to-day. 

The University of Paris 

What Bologna was in the south Paris became in northern 
Europe. The University of Paris grew out of the cathedral 
school there. The interest in law at Bologna was matched at 
Paris by the interest in theology, and Abelard was the Irnerius 
of the north. If Bologna was, in origin, .a university of students, 

European universities still give the degree of J. U. D. (Juris utriusque 
doctor). 


412 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Paris was a university of masters. The cathedral school of 
Paris taught the arts and, through its chancellor, granted the 
licentia docendi, or license to teach, after a suitable examination. 
One so licensed was known as a “master of arts” and was sup¬ 
posed to lecture. New fields of knowledge were opening up, 
however, and many young masters regarded their “degree” as 
merely a stepping stone to further study. The masters began to 
organize themselves for the study and teaching of the newer 
subjects. This happened in the last quarter of the twelfth cen¬ 
tury. The association ( universitas ) of masters assumed the 
right to admit or to refuse to admit masters newly licensed by 
the chancellor of the cathedral. Thenceforth, to get anywhere in 
the scholarly world a man must first win his license from the 
chancellor and then gain admission to the “ University of Mas¬ 
ters.” A contest arose between the two authorities. The masters 
wanted the arts course shortened so they could the more quickly 
proceed to the advanced studies, especially theology. In this as 
in other matters the masters won, and in 1231 a papal bull con¬ 
firmed them in all their demands and the chancellor of the 
cathedral was constrained to submit. 

Still earlier, however, the masters had won recognition in an¬ 
other quarter and the University of Paris to-day celebrates the 
year 1200, not 1231, as that of its foundation. The schools of 
the masters had become numerous and students had multiplied. 
The Isle de la Cite no longer sufficed and masters and scholars 
began to occupy houses on the Left Bank of the Seine, thence¬ 
forth the Latin Quarter. As at Bologna, difficulties arose be¬ 
tween scholars and townsfolk. A riot broke out and several 
persons were killed. King Philip Augustus was appealed to 
and in the year 1200 he drew up a charter giving the masters 
special privileges in the city of Paris, including exemption from 
the jurisdiction of city authorities and the right to discipline 
their own members. 

Other Universities North of the Alps 

Once founded, the growth of the University of Paris was 
rapid. There were four faculties, Arts, Theology, Law, and 
Medicine, each with its Dean. Collectively the four fields of 


MEDIAEVAL LEARNING; THE UNIVERSITIES 413 


study were known as a Studium Generale, and this, rather than 
Universitas, is the equivalent in mediaeval Latin for our word 
“University ”. Of the four faculties, Arts was by far the largest. 
The masters of arts, indeed, controlled university affairs, just 
as they do at Oxford to-day. At Paris the masters were grouped 
into four “ nations ”, the French, the Norman, the Picard, 
which included all students from the Low Countries, and the 
English, which included the Germans and those from the north 
and east of Europe generally. 

Paris became the model for the later universities of northern 
Europe. Oxford was formed by a migration from Paris, about 
1200; Cambridge, by a migration from Oxford a little later. 
Prague, in Bohemia, was founded in 1347; Heidelberg, the first 
German University, in 1386. The princely founder of Heidel¬ 
berg provided that “it shall imitate the steps of Paris in every 
way possible.” 1 At the close of the middle ages there were 
about seventy-five universities in the whole of Europe. 

Mediaeval and Modern Universities Compared 

In our study of origins, whether at Paris or Bologna, we have 
heard nothing thus far of buildings, endowments, or sport, all 
major feature of the universities of our own day. The truth is, 
mediaeval universities had none of these things. Students and 
masters lodged where they could. For lecture halls they made 
use of convenient churches or hired apartments. Endowments 
were lacking and organized sport was unknown. A formal pro¬ 
gram for the physical welfare of students would have run 
counter to the spirit of the times. In a great American uni¬ 
versity, recently, the football coach ordered each member of 
the squad to carry a football wherever he went, even to lectures. 
The mediaeval scholar would have regarded this as a strange per¬ 
version of the use of a university. 

What then have we inherited from mediaeval universities? 
First, the idea that the best way to advance human knowledge 
is to organize institutions of learning which shall have that as 
their object. Secondly, the idea that institutions of learning 
shall give young apprentices in learning a thorough training. 

1 Quoted by C. H. Haskins, The Rise of Universities , p. 29. 


414 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


A stated curriculum covering a fixed number of years, formal 
instruction, examinations, and degrees, have always been es¬ 
sential features of university organisation. The mediaeval 
emphasis on these matters, rather than upon buildings and 
athletic plant, may serve to recall to the modern mind the true 
uses of a university. As Rashdall well says, “The two most 
essential functions which a true university has to perform . . . 
are to make possible a life of study, whether for a few years or 
during a whole career, and to bring together during that period 
face to face in living intercourse, teacher and teacher, teacher 
and student, student and student.’’ Mediaeval universities 
were “universities of men”. 

The Mediaeval College 

Mediaeval students were commoners. Sons of the nobility 
were generally brought up to the profession of arms and politics; 
the learned profession was beneath them. As compared to 
modern students mediaeval students were poor. When large 
numbers of them gathered at a center of learning a housing 
problem arose. Further, the fact that many of the students 
were mere boys away from home for the first time created a 
social problem. For the solution of these problems the universi¬ 
ties were made responsible by their charters, whether from 
church or from state. 

The need for social control and for cheap lodging created the 
college. At the University of Paris the first college was founded 
in 1209; seven others were founded in the course of the thir¬ 
teenth century, twenty-seven in the fourteenth, and four in the 
fifteenth century. Kings, princes, prelates, and wealthy mer¬ 
chants vied with each other in building colleges and providing 
them with endowments. At first the colleges were merely dormi¬ 
tories where students could live inexpensively and under super¬ 
vision. Later a number of masters were assigned to live with the 
students and to help them prepare for their examinations. Col¬ 
leges did not give examinations or grant degrees. That was the 
business of the university. More and more that came to be the 
university’s principal, if not its exclusive, business. The colleges 
became the centers of student life. Dormitories were built in 


MEDIAEVAL LEARNING; THE UNIVERSITIES 415 


the form of quadrangles. Beautiful chapels, libraries, and dining 
halls were added. The better to regulate the coming and going 
of its members college windows were barred, the walls crowned 
with broken glass or cheveux des frises, and, at a certain hour in 
the evening, the gate was locked. 

The colleges of Paris were swept away at the French Revolu¬ 
tion, but those of Oxford and Cambridge still survive. At Ox¬ 
ford, especially, the visitor feels that he has the mediaeval uni¬ 
versity visibly about him. University police still patrol the 
streets, seeing to it that university by-laws are obeyed by all 
university members. One such by-law, yet unrepealed, forbids 
the carrying of bows and arrows through the streets. 

The Liberal Arts 

Practically the whole of the intellectual life of the middle 
ages was in the universities. Of no later age can this be said. It 
is therefore important that we should know what was studied 
in these universities; and we may also enquire what mediaeval 
students knew or thought they knew. The course in Arts in¬ 
cluded both the trivium and the quadrivium and extended over 
seven to nine years, four or five for the Bachelor of Arts ( bac - 
calaureus artium), and three to four for the Master of Arts 
(magister artium) . In his last years the candidate was required 
to master most of the philosophy of Aristotle, that is, the Ethics, 
Metaphysics, and Politics. Having become a master, the young 
scholar usually turned to the higher faculties of Theology, Law, 
or Medicine. 


Theology 

The course in theology was long and arduous. At Paris it 
covered a minimum of eight years and the degree of Doctor 
was not conferred until the age of thirty-five. Besides the 
Scriptures the principal textbook of the theological student was 
the “Book of Sentences” of Peter Lombard. This work was 
written about 1150 and was a standard text in the universities 
until the sixteenth century. Peter Lombard was an Italian and 
was educated at Bologna. His ambition was to do for theology 
what Gratian had done, a few years earlier, for canon law; that 


416 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


is, Peter proposed to codify theological writings, making a con¬ 
cordance of discordant views. His “Book of Sentences” is a 
book of opinions (sententix) on each of the articles of faith, 
taken one at a time, with a harmonizing opinion at the end. 
His method, therefore, was the same as that of Abelard in his 
Sic et non , but Peter’s spirit was conciliatory, not pugnacious. 
The opinions selected by Peter Lombard to conclude the debate, 
in each case, were usually drawn from St. Augustine. Before 
finally qualifying for the doctorate the mediaeval student had 
to pass through an ordeal which has no counterpart in modern 
universities. He must militare in scholis, that is, defend a series 
of propositions or theses in public and in the face of all comers; 
and this throughout a long day, beginning at six in the morning 
and continuing to six at night, with a single hour for refresh¬ 
ment at noon. 

Mediaeval Theology and Aristotle 

The world of theology was thrown into a turmoil, early in the 
thirteenth century, by the recovery of most of the works of 
Aristotle. Before 1200 only his Logic was known in the Christian 
West. So great was the prestige of this work, or series of works, 
that it was usually deemed sufficient in an argument to have 
Aristotle on your side. But Aristotle had written hundreds of 
works, not only in the field of Logic, but also in the fields of 
Natural Science and Philosophy. These works began to be 
known in the West, just after 1200, through the translations of 
Spanish scholars. Among the Arab scholars of Spain, further¬ 
more, there had appeared a group of rationalistic thinkers led 
by the great philosopher Averroes of Cordova (d. 1198). Along 
with the works of the great Greek, therefore, the comments of 
Averroes were translated also. A school of Averroists sprang 
up at the University of Paris and elsewhere. “ It speaks volumes 
for the originality and force of Aristotle’s thought that it was 
not direct, but was filtered through Latin translations of He¬ 
brew translations of Arabic translations of Syriac translations 
from the original Greek!” 1 

To Aristotle’s way of thinking God was merely the Final 

1 Thompson, The Middle Ages, II, 770. 


MEDIEVAL LEARNING; THE UNIVERSITIES 417 


Cause. Not the Bible but biology was the basis of his thought. 
The views of the great pagan scientist caused a tumult in the 
West. In 1210 the teaching of Aristotle was forbidden in the 
University of Paris. Ten years later the pope ordered the ap¬ 
pointment of Dominican and Franciscan professors of theology 
at Paris, as a counter-offensive. Saner counsels soon prevailed, 
however. It was felt that unchanging as were the truths of reli¬ 
gion, the truths of science might be no less so. Was it possible 
to reconcile religion and science? In a great act of statesmanship 
the pope, in 1261, appointed a commission, made up of Thomas 
Aquinas and one associate, to make an authoritative translation 
of the works of Aristotle and to write a commentary on them. 

Thomas Aquinas was an Italian of noble birth who had joined 
the Dominicans as a young man. He went the rounds of the 
mediaeval universities, studying at Naples, Cologne, and Paris; 
later he lectured much at Paris; and then for a few years was 
Master of the papal schools in Rome. Undertaking the papal 
commission in 1261 at the age of thirty-six, he worked at his 
task for eight years. He made a survey of the whole field of 
theology as Peter Lombard had done a century earlier. Thomas 
Aquinas argued that there could be no conflict between the 
truth of revelation and “natural truth” or reason because both 
have a common origin. God has revealed Himself and is reveal¬ 
ing Himself through the Scriptures and through the church. 
But He has also revealed Himself through the thought of 
Aristotle, Thomas argued. No man has come any nearer to 
reconciling religion and science than St. Thomas Aquinas. His 
views were accepted as authoritative in all the mediaeval uni¬ 
versities almost at once; and his works are standard texts in 
the schools of the Roman Catholic Church to-day. 

Mediaeval Science 

We have considered Arts and Theology, two of the four 
faculties usually represented at the greater mediaeval universi¬ 
ties. A third faculty, Law, canon or civil or both, we have suf¬ 
ficiently considered elsewhere. There remains, then, the fourth, 
the faculty of Medicine, and under this head we may conven¬ 
iently deal with mediaeval science in general. 


418 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Of all the fields of knowledge cultivated by the ancients the 
field of science was the last to be reentered by mediaeval man. 
It is easy to see why this should be so. Men were taught by the 
church to study first of all how they might attain unto salva¬ 
tion, and that it was best to close their eyes to the world about 
them. “For what profiteth a man if he gain the whole world 
and lose his own soul? ” In this matter, if in little else, the Greek 
church agreed with the Roman. Justinian closed the schools of 
Athens in 529 a.d. and Greek science expired. In the West, 
nature remained a forbidden book for some centuries. The 
Carolingian Renascence, so important in the field of education, 
brought no new attitude toward science. Nor was there any 
real change until the beginning of the twelfth century. 

Just how much and how little scientific knowledge and sci¬ 
entific interest there was in western Europe before the twelfth 
century renascence we may learn by studying the career of 
Gerbert of Aurillac, who knew whatever science there was to 
know in his age. A native of Auvergne, probably of peasant 
birth, Gerbert entered the clergy and studied in the Spanish 
March, at Rome, and in France. For a period he was “head¬ 
master” of the cathedral school of Rheims. His reputation for 
learning gained him the favor of the first three Ottos, suc¬ 
cessively emperors, and Gerbert became abbot of Bobbio, arch¬ 
bishop of Ravenna, and pope (Sylvester II, 999-1004). 

Gerbert’s geometry consisted chiefly of the elementary 
methods of measurement which had come down from the 
Roman surveyors. In arithmetic also his sources were Roman 
and he used the cumbersome Roman methods of computation. 
Gerbert invented an abacus which, we are told, was an improve¬ 
ment upon those generally in use. He taught the church music 
of his day and is said to have built an organ. Thus far Gerbert 
is the intelligent learner and teacher, but not a man of original 
thought. In astronomy, however, he displayed a spirit that 
may almost be called scientific. His pupil Richer writes as fol¬ 
lows of his master’s astronomical knowledge and skill: “This 
difficult subject he illustrated by means of admirable instru¬ 
ments. First he illustrated the world’s sphere by one of solid 
wood, the greater by the less. He fixed it obliquely as to the 


MEDIAEVAL LEARNING; THE UNIVERSITIES 419 


horizon with two poles, and near the upper pole set the northern 
constellations, and by the lower one those of the south. He de¬ 
termined its position by means of a circle called by the Greeks 
orizon and by the Latins limitans, because it divides the con¬ 
stellations which are seen from those which are not. By his 
sphere thus fixed, he demonstrated the rising and setting of the 
stars, and taught his disciples to recognize them. And at night 
he followed their courses and marked the place of their rising 
and setting upon the different regions of his model.” 1 

Here was one mind, at least, which was not closed to the 
outer world. But, however admirable Gerbert’s scientific tem¬ 
per, his accomplishments, deemed magical in his own age, 
were very meagre. He lacked facts and he lacked technical 
equipment. It is clear that Gerbert’s Europe was not in direct 
contact with the Greek science of the past nor with the Arabic 
science of its own time. 

It has just been said that when Justinian closed the schools 
of Athens Greek science expired. It expired in Europe, but 
exiled Greek scholars made their way to Persia and found a 
welcome at the court of Chosroes I, and the Persian capital be¬ 
came the greatest intellectual center of the western world. 
Persian scholars, grounded in their own mathematical, astro¬ 
nomical, and other scientific learning, now assimilated the 
treasures of Greek knowledge. Hindu science was added, 
especially mathematics, and scholars were drawn to the Persian 
capital from India. There followed the conquest of Persia by 
Mohammedanism, and the whole heritage of Greek, Persian, 
and Hindu science passed to the Arabs. Baghdad became the 
seat of a scientific renascence in the East at the same time that 
the court of Charlemagne was the seat of a Latin renascence in 
the West. The writings and translations of the Baghdad sci¬ 
entists were gradually disseminated throughout the Saracen 
empire. Palermo, in Sicily, and Granada, Toledo, Seville, and 
Cordova, in Spain, became important centers for the teaching 
and the study of science in the West. 

Meanwhile the rise of commerce, the growth of cities, and 
the launching of the Crusades had awakened in at least a few 

1 Quoted in Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind , I, 290. 


420 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


western scholars a curious and inquiring interest in the world 
about them. Commerce and the Crusades, furthermore, brought 
a stimulating contact between Christian Europe and the Mos¬ 
lem world. Western scholars began to appropriate eagerly the 
fascinating scientific lore of the Saracens. The first half of the 
twelfth century was “the age of the translators”, during which 
scores of scientific treatises were done into Latin from Arabic. 
A single Italian scholar, Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187), trans¬ 
lated seventy-one such treatises. Much of the work of trans¬ 
lating was done by educated Jews resident in Spain, who sought 
a European market for their writings. Thus did Greek science, 
the door at Constantinople being closed, wend its way to the 
West through Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, North 
Africa, and Spain. 

Let us enquire more particularly what was the extent of this 
body of fact which became, in the thirteenth century, the con¬ 
tent of scientific instruction in western Europe. First, as to 
mathematics. In arithmetic the really important advance was 
a new system of notation and calculation made possible by the 
introduction of the “arabic” numerals. The new numerals 
were really of Hindu origin, probably, and Hindu mathematics 
had developed quite independently of the Greeks. Arabic 
scholars, however, had invented the zero, thus making possible 
the decimal system of computation. What the alphabet is to the 
art of language the Arabic numerals are to the science of arith¬ 
metic. Algebra was an invention of Arabic mathematicians 
who developed it as far as quadratics. The West now got 
Euclid’s geometry, also, to which Arab scholars had added 
plane and spherical trigonometry. 

In astronomy, also, the West learned much. The Arabs had 
established observatories in the leading cities and had calcu¬ 
lated their latitude and longitude. They had made use of the 
sextant. They had prepared tables recording the movements 
of the stars. Western scholars assimilated this body of knowl¬ 
edge and even added to it. No scientific scholar of the middle 
ages believed that the earth was flat. Using Greek and Arabic 
data, western scholars attempted to calculate eclipses and to 
work out the precession of the equinoxes. Improved astro- 


MEDIAEVAL LEARNING; THE UNIVERSITIES 421 

nomical tables were prepared, and the necessity for a further 
correction of the calendar was understood. These corrected 
tables, the work of mediaeval scholars, were carried by both 
Columbus and Vasco da Gama in their famous voyages of dis¬ 
covery. 

We must remember, however, that alongside this scientific 
interest in the heavenly bodies there persisted a much greater 
popular interest of a very unscientific sort. Most mediaeval 
people were farmers, who were much concerned about the 
weather. The heavenly bodies were familiar objects to them. 
They lived much in the open and there was no artificial illumina¬ 
tion after dark to outshine the moon and the stars. It was com¬ 
monly believed that the movements of the heavenly bodies 
affected the weather. Further, following a tradition descended 
through the Romans from Chaldean and even earlier sources, 
mediaeval man believed that the stars influenced human motives 
and actions. There was much more money in being an astrologer, 
in the middle ages, than in being an astronomer. It has only 
been with difficulty and after repeated efforts that astronomy 
has escaped from its paralyzing contact with astrology. 

In the field of medicine we may say of mediaeval man that his 
knowledge was small, but that he made admirable use of it. 
The medical works of Galen, the Greek, were recovered entire 
through translations from the Arabic. The Arabs themselves 
had made much use of Galen and had established a school of 
medicine at Salerno. Original contributions of the Arabs were 
in the field of medical herbs and drugs; the whole of the phar¬ 
macopoeia as we now have it, excepting chemical compounds, 
thus came into the possession of mediaeval man. To the sum 
total of this Greek-Arab knowledge mediaeval physicians made 
practically no contribution. Nor is it surprising. Human 
anatomy, the foundation of all medical knowledge, was closed 
to research by the attitude of the church, which taught a 
physical resurrection. The only anatomy known to the middle 
ages was that learned from poor copies of Greek drawings. The 
first anatomists of western Europe were the painters of the 
Italian Renascence who found the study of the human body a 
necessary preliminary to its portrayal. 


422 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


But this is not to say that mediaeval men were not interested 
in medicine. Like ourselves, they took a very human interest 
in the state of their health and wanted to live as long as possible. 
There are some 30,000 scientific manuscripts from the middle 
ages in the libraries of England to-day and of these more than 
one-half are on medicine alone. It is in the practice of medicine 
that the middle ages made noteworthy advances. Mediaeval 
physicians developed in operative skill beyond anything there¬ 
tofore known, undertaking operations for hernia, gallstones, 
and cataract, and making use of anaesthetics in some cases. The 
therapeutic value of bathing was well understood. 

Incidentally, the gross suggestion that mediaeval men did 
not wash, and that the middle ages may be defined as “a thou¬ 
sand years without a bath”, should be definitely dismissed. 
The Romans had been famous for their baths. The Germans, 
even in the time of Tacitus, displayed a fondness for hot water. 
Mediaeval men were the heirs of both. Every mediaeval city of 
importance maintained a number of public baths. To be sure, 
some mediaeval saints paid no attention to their bodies in order 
that they might give more attention to their souls; but we 
should remember that sainthood, and presumably, therefore, 
saintly neglect of the body, was rare even in the middle ages. 

In the field of public health, also, much advance was made, 
especially in the larger cities. Milan, in the thirteenth century, 
had two hundred physicians, some of them employed by the 
city itself to minister to the poor. Hospitals were numerous. 
Many of the modern hospitals of Europe are of mediaeval 
foundation. In the treatment of contagious diseases mediaeval 
authorities were more “modern” than any succeeding age 
except the most recent. Their treatment was segregation. 
Plague, tuberculosis, leprosy, anthrax, and other diseases were 
recognized as such and isolated. Quarantine ( quarantina , forty 
days) was first instituted at Venice in the fourteenth century. 
Finally, and it is a fact that merits the undying gratitude of us 
moderns, leprosy in Europe was stamped out. 

In concluding this discussion of mediaeval science it will be 
well to learn something of the greatest experimental scientist 
of the middle ages, Roger Bacon (d. 1294). He was born in 


MEDIEVAL LEARNING; THE UNIVERSITIES 423 


England, of a wealthy family, apparently. He first studied at 
Oxford, where he was a pupil of the famous Robert Grosseteste, 
bishop of Lincoln, chancellor of Oxford University, and in- 
spirer of many generations of students. From Oxford Bacon 
proceeded to Paris where he won the doctorate. He then spent 
twenty years in scientific research, studying mathematics, 
physics, optics, and chemistry, and spending much money on 
experiments and instruments. It is known that Bacon con¬ 
structed several microscopes for his own use. Meanwhile he had 
become a Franciscan and his activities fell under the suspicion 
of his Order. Between terms in prison, covering many years, 
Bacon wrote the works on which his fame rests. It is note¬ 
worthy that these works would have remained unwritten but 
for the personal interest in Bacon’s experiments of no less a 
person than the pope himself (Clement IX). 

Bacon’s scientific achievements excite our wonder only if we 
know how meagre his technical equipment was. Much more 
remarkable than his experiments was the spirit in which he 
made them. Bacon insisted that first-hand knowledge was the 
sole authority. In forty years of listening to the scholastics he 
had learned nothing, he said. Even in the study of the Scrip¬ 
tures it was essential that the scholar study them in the original 
Hebrew and Greek, he maintained. Bacon himself compiled 
grammars in those languages. “The text of Scripture is horribly 
corrupt in the Vulgate copy at Paris,” he wrote. The study of 
logic, so important in the universities, Bacon thought of little 
value. He observed that the thoughts of illiterate men followed 
the laws of logic naturally. 

Modern as all this sounds, Bacon was not a modern, but was 
fundamentally, as each of us must be, a child of his own time. 
He justified his interest in the sciences on the ground, always, 
that they were the servants of religion. We must study zoology, 
Bacon urged, as an example, in order to comprehend the Bib¬ 
lical injunction, “Be as wise as a serpent”. By observation we 
shall discover that it is the serpent’s habit to expose its body 
in order to protect its head. Even so should Christians expose 
themselves in defense of their Head, which is Christ, he argued. 
The study of mathematics will assist us in determining the ac- 


424 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


curate measurements of the Ark, the Tabernacle, and the 
Temple, or even to locate Hell and Heaven. A knowledge of 
Greek Bacon held to be indispensable for the study of the New 
Testament, but he gave no thought to the Greek classics. One 
might almost suspect Bacon of a design to outwit the ecclesias¬ 
tical authorities, in all this, were it not for the fact that he was 
never remarkable for his tact. 

Bacon’s scientific imagination is manifested in a remarkable 
prevision in which he prophesied that there would be “machines 
for navigating . . . without rowers, so that great ships suited 
to river or ocean, guided by one man, may be borne with greater 
speed than if they were full of men. Likewise cars may be made 
so that without a draught animal they may be moved cum 
impetu inestimabili , as we deem the scythed chariots to have 
been from which antiquity fought. And flying machines are 
possible, so that a man may sit in the middle turning some 
device by which artificial wings may beat the air in the manner 
of a flying bird.” 1 Finally, we may note that Bacon did escape 
from his age for a moment and place himself fully abreast of the 
greatest scientists of our own day, when he defined true philoso¬ 
phy as the effort to “arrive at a knowledge of the Creator 
through knowledge of the created world.” 

For Further Reading 

Cambridge Mediaeval History, VI, chap. 17 

C. H. Haskins, The Rise of Universities 

R. S. Rait, Life in the Mediaeval University 

L. J. Paetow, The Arts Course at the Mediaeval Universities 

C. 0. Norton, Readings in the History of Education 

D. C. Munro, The Mediaeval Student 

J. A. Symonds, Wine, Women, and Song 
H. Wadell, Wandering Scholars ‘ 

H. 0. Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind, II, chaps. 26, 31, and 34 to 43 
H. Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 2 vols. 

L. Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science during the 

first Thirteen Centuries of our Era, 2 vols. 

R. L. Poole, Illustrations of the History of Mediaeval Thought 

M. de Wulf, History of Mediaeval Philosophy 

1 Quoted by Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind, II, 538. 


MEDIAEVAL LEARNING; THE UNIVERSITIES 425 


C. H. Haskins, The Renascence of the Twelfth Century 
J. McCabe, Abelard 
P. Conway, St. Thomas Aquinas 

C. Singer, A Short History of Medicine 

G. Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science 
W. W. Bryant, History of Astronomy 

D. E. Smith and L. C. Karpinski, The Hindu-Arabic Numerals 


CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 


MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE 

The Latin literature of the middle ages was not only very ex¬ 
tensive but it also included masterpieces as worthy of study as 
the Latin classics of an earlier age. A literature that included 
such classics as the Justinian Code and the Vulgate cannot well 
be ignored. A full appreciation of the Latin classics of the 
middle ages is delayed, however, by the persistence of a prej¬ 
udice which began with the Renascence. 

Medieval Histories 

The most important works of mediaeval literature in Latin 
were in the fields of religion and philosophy. These have been 
sufficiently considered in a previous chapter. There were also 
works of importance in history. We need not enter into the dis¬ 
cussion of whether history is literature or something else. Cer¬ 
tainly if mediaeval history was not literature still less was it any¬ 
thing else. The decline of historical writing always reveals the 
decline of civilization, just as a keen interest in the past and a 
concern for preserving records for posterity are the signs of an 
advancing civilization. 

In the early middle ages history was neither written nor 
studied. Later on a beginning is seen in the brief notes of events, 
heard of during the year, which certain monks wrote in the 
margins of their Easter tables. The historical taste of the 
monastic scribes was quite uneducated. Natural phenomena 
such as floods, eclipses, and plagues of locusts, and super¬ 
natural events such as miracles wrought by the wonder-working 
bones of the local saint, and political events such as the death 
or coronation of kings and princes, are all jotted down indis¬ 
criminately in these monastic “annals”. Here and there were 
individuals who consciously set themselves the task of writing 
history. Among such were Gregory of Tours, who wrote a 

426 


MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE 


427 


“History of the Franks”, in the sixth century, and Paul the 
Deacon, who wrote the “History of the Lombards”, in the 
seventh century, and Bede, who wrote the “Ecclesiastical 
History of England”, in the eighth century. 

These early writers of history were convinced that human 
history is but the revelation of God’s will and purpose. They 
usually began with the Creation and then raced rapidly through 
the centuries down to their own times. The Old Testament was 
their chief source for early times and Palestine appears in their 
pages all out of proportion to the rest of the world. Obviously 
the works of such writers are useful to-day only in so far as they 
treat adequately and at first hand the age in which they were 
written. Of the early writers Bede displays the best critical 
judgment, if indeed he has not a monopoly of it. 

The best period of history writing in the middle ages, how¬ 
ever, was that of the Crusades. The romance of stirring deeds 
in far-off lands and the display of human motives which the 
Crusades called forth moved several first-rate minds to make 
connected and careful accounts of contemporary events. Out¬ 
standing in this field were Gerbert de Nogent’s Gesta Dei per 
Francos (“ What God has wrought through the Franks ”), and the 
“History of the Kingdom of Jerusalem”, by William, arch¬ 
bishop of Tyre. The latter, in point of carefulness and style, is 
perhaps the greatest piece of historical writing of the middle 
ages. 


Anecdotes and Fables 

Mediaeval histories were so full of the miraculous and the 
inconsequential that it is an easy transition to another branch 
of mediaeval literature in Latin, namely, books of anecdotes 
and fables. Collections of the former were both numerous and 
popular; probably they were designed to be used by the clergy 
as illustrations for sermon points. The most popular collection 
was the Dialogus miraculorum, written by a monk named 
Caesarius of Heisterbach (d. about 1240). There is hardly a 
non-miraculous anecdote in the collection. One of the best 
known stories is that of “a certain woman who kept many bees, 
which throve not, but died in great numbers. . . . She went to 


428 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


church and, making as though she would communicate, took 
the Lord’s Body, which she took from her mouth as soon as the 
priest had departed and laid it in one of her hives. Mark the 
marvellous power of God! These little worms, recognizing the 
might of their Creator, built for their sweetest Guest, out of 
their sweetest honeycombs, a tiny chapel of marvellous work¬ 
manship, wherein they set up an altar of the same material and 
laid thereon this most holy Body.” 1 Other popular collections 
were of animal fables, illustrating the traits of the lion, the fox, 
the wolf, and the ass. Mediaeval writers borrowed these tales 
from older sources, dressed them up in mediaeval clothes, and 
handed them on to us. In these animal fables we are introduced 
to an element in Latin literature that is neither theological nor 
Christian. 


Other Literature in Latin 

Indeed, we must not assume that all mediaeval men or even 
that all clergymen were exclusively concerned with the future 
life. There was a considerable body of poetry in Latin dealing 
with passionate love and with love of nature, as well as with 
themes of a grosser sort. Many such poems survive. They were 
the work of wandering priests and monks, and they were doubt¬ 
less popular among the pilgrims, vagabonds, and other way¬ 
faring folk of the middle ages. 

Literature in the Vernacular 

Important as mediaeval literature in Latin is, however, it was 
the expression of a single class, the clergy, who alone could read 
and write Latin. The common people were below the level of 
such learning and the nobility were above it. Indeed, the lordly 
contempt of the man of action for mere book-learning lasted 
through the middle ages; and it persists in an attenuated and 
somewhat altered form to-day. The unlettered classes had 
ideas and emotions to express no less than the clergy, however. 
They found an instrument for the expression of their ideas, an 
outlet for their imagination, in the native tongues. Mediaeval 
literature in the vernacular is important in the absolute sense, 

1 From G. G. Coulton, Life in the Middle Ages , I, 71. 


MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE 


429 


though admittedly less important than the literature in Latin. 
In the relative sense, however, vernacular literature is of much 
greater importance than Latin, for it is the beginning of a 
stream which has flowed down into the present. 

Origin and Development of the Romance Languages 

We may deal, first, with the evolution of modern languages, 
beginning with the Roman or Romance tongues. Rome stamped 
her impress upon all conquered people, and in western Europe 
she taught her subjects to speak Latin. But these subjects, in 
turn, stamped their impress upon the Latin language. Latin, 
as every school boy knows, is a particularly precise language, 
requiring much formal drill in its use. In the mouths of the il¬ 
literate masses of the Roman West, in Britain, in Gaul, in 
Spain, even in Italy, classical Latin became much less classical. 
Accents were shifted and endings were dropped. The word order, 
so carefully studied by the classicists with a view to artistic 
balance and to dignity of phrasing, with the verb left to the last, 
was utterly beyond the capacity of the masses, if not also foreign 
to their taste. In their speech the Latin words flowed along 
parallel to their thought in a “linear” word order, the verb 
taking a place determined by the sense. Furthermore, classical 
Latin words soon took on new meanings, and hundreds of new 
words were introduced from tongues formerly spoken by the 
conquered natives. By the third century, long before the end 
of the Empire, “low” Latin was well established. 

The fall of Rome merely completed a process already begun. 
Classical Latin ceased to be spoken by any class of people ex¬ 
cept the clergy. It became, thus, a “dead” language, that is, 
a language fixed and changeless. “Low” Latin, however, was 
very much alive and, freed from any influence making for pre¬ 
cision or standardization, it yielded completely to influences 
which were popular and local. From the Germanic invaders it 
picked up new words, though the total number of such words 
in all the modern Romance languages taken together is less than 
one thousand. French took over almost as many Arabic words 
as Germanic, from long contact with the Saracens. Local usage 
was a far more important influence than invasion. Dialects 


430 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


multiplied exceedingly in the early middle ages, reflecting 
faithfully the feudal disintegration of the period. Dante 
(d. 1321) counted fourteen dialects in the Italy of his day, and 
the diffusion of tongues was at least as great in France, Spain, 
and other Romance lands. 

The story of the rise to dominance, in each country, of a 
single dialect, and of the struggle for survival (still going on) 
of the others, is a fascinating one; but it belongs more to 
modern than to mediaeval history. Modern Italian is the dia¬ 
lect of Tuscany (lingua Toscana ), the tongue of Dante. Modern 
French is langue d’ceil, or the north-of-France French. In Spain 
the dialect of Castile became the Spanish of to-day. Thus the 
law of languages, in European history, seems to be that of the 
death of dialects. Doubtless this law will continue in operation. 
A few centuries hence there may be only half a dozen languages 
in the world, instead of some thousands (about 3500), as at 
present. Which will survive? 

The story of the development of the Germanic and Slavic 
tongues is much more simple than the story of the evolution of 
the Romance languages, and it need not detain us here. The 
languages of the peoples of northern and eastern Europe lived 
on undisturbed by Roman conquest. Further, they remained 
as they had always been, purely oral languages, until the literary 
impulses of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries began to stir 
the hearts of mediaeval laymen. 

Germanic Literature 

It is a most significant fact that a mediaeval literature in the 
vernacular first appeared in those lands of western Europe that 
were farthest from Rome. Anglo-Saxon England, Old Ger¬ 
many, and Scandinavia were farthest from Rome culturally as 
well as physically. No one cared to write in Latin in those lands, 
in the earlier centuries, because there was as yet no considerable 
class interested in classical culture. Literature in the Teutonic 
countries, therefore, began in the vernacular. Its first appear¬ 
ance was in the seventh century, and it was many centuries 
before the movement spread to France and Christian Spain, 
where writers in the vernacular had to face the competition of 


MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE 


431 


Latin. Last of all, and not until the thirteenth century was well 
advanced, a native literature in Italian challenged the supremacy 
of Latin in its last stronghold. 

We have seen something of the literature of the pagan Teu¬ 
tonic world already, in connection with our study of the early 
Germans. Tacitus noted the fondness of the Germans for re¬ 
counting tall tales about their semi-mythical ancestors. The 
greatest of the German epics that has come down to us is Das 
Nibelungenlied. This was put into writing in the tenth century, 
in all probability, though the versions of the tale as we have it 
date from the twelfth century. The Nibelungenlied is the story 
of the tragedy of Siegfried and Brimnhilde. Wagner has made 
it familiar to us in his Ring der Nibelungen. The historical basis 
of the story was the conquest of the kingdom of the Burgundians 
by Attila, in the fifth century. Most of the characters and scenes 
were drawn from Teutonic folk tales. 

The Teutonic literature of Anglo-Saxon England was both 
the earliest in Europe and the most important in the Teutonic 
world. The earliest “masterpiece” was Beowulf, a poem of 
some three thousand lines, dating from the eighth century, as 
we have it, but first appearing in written form at least a century 
earlier. We have noted the nature and the merits of this heathen 
epic in an earlier chapter. There, also, an account was given, 
sufficiently full, of the Bible-story poetry of Caedmon and 
Cynewulf, of the prose translations and commentaries of King 
Alfred, and of the letters and sermons of iElfric. It may be 
added that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , also in Old English prose, 
was the most important historical work in a native language of 
the early middle ages. It was begun by monks of Winchester 
and Peterborough in the reign of Alfred and it was continued 
for four hundred years. With the Norman Conquest literature 
in English abruptly ceased, for no one of any standing cared 
any longer to write in English. Furthermore, the ruling class, 
the Norman nobility, was already interested in a literature in 
its native tongue, just beginning to be popular in the north of 
France. In short, we have reached the period when literature 
began among the French peoples and to that literature we may 
now turn. 


432 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


French Literature of the North 

In mediaeval French literature there were two great divisions, 
as in mediaeval France, the north and the south, or Languedoeil 
and Languedoc. Langue d’ceil was the tongue of those whose 
word for “yes” was ceil. This tongue, in its various dialects, 
was spoken not only in France, north of the Loire, but also in 
England and, by the ruling classes, in Wales and the south of 
Scotland. It penetrated also into the Rhine lands and the Low 
Countries. The Normans carried it to southern Italy and to 
Sicily. Crusaders carried it to Syria where it became the lingua 
franca of the Near East. In langue d’ceil, beginning about 
1100 a.d., was written the most important literature of the 
middle ages. Such was the preeminence of this language and 
literature that it threatened for a time “to become a universal 
means of literary expression.” 

What were the themes of this French literature of the north 
of France? 

“Ne sont que trois matieres k nul home entendant, 

De France, de Bretagne, et de Rome le Grant.” 

Thus wrote a Norman poet of the twelfth century. That is, the 
poets and the later prose writers of the north hung their matter 
on the peg of Charlemagne, of Arthur, or of Rome. Mediaeval 
men were great pilgrims, as we have seen. Local shrines drew 
hundreds yearly. But the three great pilgrim centers were 
St. James at Compostella, Rome, and Jerusalem. Pilgrims to 
those shrines, through the centuries, followed the great overland 
trade routes. Halts were numerous, since travel flowed at a 
foot’s pace. Monasteries and churches along the pilgrim high¬ 
ways provided for the comfort and entertainment of pilgrims 
and were themselves enriched by their gifts and purchases. To 
entertain the visitors minstrels sang of the deeds of local saints 
and heroes. Tall tales were recited in stirring verse. In elabo¬ 
rating the details of their stories the jongleurs, as the minstrels 
were called, had the help of the local clergy, eager to capitalize 
the history of the neighborhood. How early these stories began 
to shape themselves we do not know, but probably not very 


MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE 


433 


long before the year 1100, which is about the date of the earliest 
extant text that has come down to us. 

The Chansons de Geste 

Certain stories dealt with the deeds of Charlemagne and his 
knights. There are between seventy and eighty of these chansons 
de geste (from gesta, deeds), as they are called. The Charlemagne 
of these tales is to be identified with the Charlemagne of history, 
no doubt, but the historical Charlemagne did not make a pil¬ 
grimage to Jerusalem, nor was he ever in Brittany, to mention 
but two of the many unhistorical gesta attributed to him. Most 
of the chansons do not deal with Charlemagne in person, how¬ 
ever, but with heroes who were supposed to have lived in the 
time of the great emperor, to whom the whole world is repre¬ 
sented as owing allegiance. The tales are very warlike. Prodigies 
of valor are sprinkled plentifully through them. Further, the 
chansons are steeped in feudalism, the emphases being on loy¬ 
alty to one’s lord, resistance to the arbitrary acts of an op¬ 
pressive seigneur, and so on. They reflect the feudal age in 
which they were written, not the age of Charlemagne which 
they purport to celebrate. Further, a crusading fervor is ex¬ 
hibited, zeal for the Christian faith and hatred for the Saracens 
being emphasized. A love element is usually present but not 
dominant, and it is expressed simply and without artifice. The 
women were little disposed to suffer in silence but sometimes 
made the first advances. It is evident that the audience to 
which these tales were recited was a mixed audience represen¬ 
tative of all social classes and, as would obviously be the case, 
predominantly male. 

By far the most famous of the stirring tales in the Cycle of 
Charlemagne is the Chanson de Roland. “What Homer is to 
Greek and Vergil is to Latin literature, that the Chanson de 
Roland is to mediaeval literature.” 1 Charlemagne was returning 
from a campaign against the Saracens in the Spanish March. 
In a defile of the Pyrenees, the pass of Roncesvalles, on Au¬ 
gust 15, 778, the rear guard of the Frankish king’s army was 
set upon by the Basques and killed to the last man. Among the 

1 Thompson, The Middle Ages , II, 813. 


434 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


dead was one Hruodlandus. Thus far sober historical fact. 
About it and enshrining it the genius of a mediaeval writer, or 
a series of writers, built an elaborate edifice of the imagination. 

The poem tells the story of the betrayal of Roland, bravest 
and most celebrated of Charlemagne’s knights, by a vile rene¬ 
gade, Ganelon. The emperor is represented as being a venerable 
graybeard of some two hundred years, obviously a purely 
literary Charlemagne. Not the Basques but the hated Saracens 
attack the rear guard, in the poem; and against the infidels the 
poem breathes a hatred which derived from the crusading ardor 
of the eleventh century. A noble spirit of feudal loyalty is re¬ 
vealed in Roland’s determination to stand his ground as the 
Saracens attack. “Here must we hold for our king”, he said. 
“A man should suffer for his lord, endure heat and cold, though 
he lose his hair and hide. Let us each strike his best, that no 
evil song be sung of us.” 1 We even find an expression of devo¬ 
tion to France, surely one of the earliest on record, in Roland’s 
cry, “Please God and His holy angels, France shall not be . . . 
shamed through me; better death than dishonor.” 2 When the 
fatal news of her lover’s death was made known to Aude, 
Roland’s betrothed, she cried, “God forbid and His saints and 
angels, that I should live after Roland”, and fell dead at the 
emperor’s feet. 3 The Chanson de Roland closes with the trial of 
the traitor Ganelon. The procedure was feudal and the trial 
was by combat, in which Ganelon’s champion was defeated. 
Ganelon was torn in pieces by horses. His relatives were more 
kindly dealt with and were merely hanged. 

The Arthurian Cycle 

The literature of Languedceil dealt also with the “matter of 
Arthur”. Without doubt the Arthurian Cycle is the most 
precious literary legacy of the middle ages. Here we have a 
collection of tales of King Arthur and the knights of the Round 
Table. The tender and tragic love story of Lancelot and 
Guenevere; the story of Sir Galahad, their son, the perfect 

1 From Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind , I, 576. 

2 Ibid. 

3 Ibid., p. 578. 


MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE 


435 


knight, sans peur et sans reproche; the story of the Grail and 
the Quest; the story of Tristram and Iseult, perhaps the world’s 
greatest love story—these are some of the themes of the Ar¬ 
thurian Cycle. As literary texts they are practically contem¬ 
porary with the texts of the Cycle of Charlemagne, that is, the 
earliest date from the beginning of the twelfth century. The 
north of France was the principal center of this poetic activity, 
but Anglo-Norman poets of England were engaged in it too. 
But if the poets were French and Anglo-Norman the characters 
and the stories were Celtic. No people of Europe were so richly 
endowed with creative imagination and emotional fire, “the 
rolling eye and the fine frenzy”, as the Irish, the Welsh, and the 
Bretons. Fairies, demons, giants, and sorcerers were common¬ 
place in Celtic tales. Even the flesh and blood heroes and hero¬ 
ines embarked upon mystic quests, imbibed drafts of strange 
potency, wielded swords or daggers of magic quality, and, gen¬ 
erally, carried on their activities in an atmosphere of illusion. 

The historical element in the Arthurian Cycle is admittedly 
slight. Arthur himself has been identified as a British chieftain 
of the fifth century who led the opposition to the Saxon invaders. 
However, some scholars, more sternly inflexible than their fel¬ 
lows, deny that Arthur ever had a real existence. Arthur’s name 
first “appeared in print” in a work entitled Historia Regum 
Britannix (“History of the Kings of Britain”) by one Geoffrey 
of Monmouth, in the year 1136. Though labelled “history” 
this work is largely, if not wholly, fiction, “probably the most 
successful piece of fiction ever produced.” 1 Geoffrey was an 
Anglo-Norman bishop of Wales, and was himself half Welsh 
by descent. What Geoffrey’s sources were we shall never know. 
Celtic legends comprised a very large part of his material, and 
Geoffrey’s own Celtic imagination played an indeterminate 
part. 

Geoffrey’s work was the source book of the Anglo-Norman 
and French poets of the twelfth century. 2 Then, after a century 
of poetic elaboration, prose writers entered the field. The fa- 

1 Cambridge Mediaeval History , VI, 825. 

2 It should be stated that important parts of the Arthurian legend as we 
have it to-day were added after Geoffrey’s time. 


436 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


vorite theme of the prose writers was the Grail. Lancelot, barely- 
mentioned by the poets, became a leading figure in prose, and 
Galahad was invented in order that Lancelot, denied the 
supreme honor of winning the Grail because of his illicit love 
for Queen Guenevere, might win the Grail through his son. In 
the fifteenth century Sir Thomas Malory wrote in English 
prose his “Morte d’Arthur”, and through this famous work the 
Arthurian legend passed as a whole into the stream of English 
literature. 

The contrasts between the two literary cycles of Charle¬ 
magne and of Arthur are many and important. Though prac¬ 
tically contemporary, and both widely known throughout 
western Europe, the two cycles did not influence each other. 
Indeed, writers in one field seem to have studiously ignored the 
other field. As a matter of fact this was necessary, for Charle¬ 
magne and Arthur were both represented as ruling over the 
whole Christian world and even literary imagination balks at 
two world-emperors reigning simultaneously. The Arthurian 
poets were artists. They used metre and rhyme. They signed 
their names to their works. Marie de France, Chretien de 
Troyes, and Wolfram von Eschenbach were some of the twelfth 
century poets. Their works were written to be read, not recited. 
Thus it would seem that the Arthurian romances were addressed 
to a more select group than the Carolingian, to persons of cul¬ 
tivated tastes to whom form was important as well as matter. 
Further, women were an important part of the Arthurian 
audience. This is suggested by the way the love theme is 
handled. Love is more romantic and less physical than in the 
Carolingian Cycle. The knight fares forth to perform some act 
of gallantry which will win him the favor of his lady. The lady 
may be, or become, his wife; but if the exigencies of the plot 
require it, a lady may already have a husband and still be some 
one else’s inspiration. Several of the patrons of the Arthurian 
poets were women, and at least one of the early poets was a 
woman. 

The Arthurian Cycle includes two of the greatest love stories 
in all literature, that of Lancelot and Guenevere and that of 
Tristram and Iseult. Both appear in many versions, French, 


MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE 


437 


English, German, Italian, even Scandinavian, thus showing 
their universal appeal. In both stories love is represented as 
being a law in itself, a resistless power, absorbing all the faculties 
of the lovers. Truth, honor, and loyalty are trampled in the 
dust by this imperious passion. Human love is represented in 
these stories as the greatest thing in life, the teachings of the 
church to the contrary notwithstanding. The appearance of 
manuals on the “Art of Love” further attest the fact (which 
should need no attesting) that mediaeval men were, fundamen¬ 
tally, quite human. Such a manual, the work of one Andrew 
the Chaplain (c. 1200), lists thirty-one rules. Examples are, 
“None can love two at once”, “It is love’s way always to in¬ 
crease or lessen”, “The one whom love disturbs, eats and sleeps 
little”, and “Marriage is not a good excuse for rejecting love.” 1 

In depicting romantic love, in the story of the Quest of the 
Grail, and in the portrayal of Sir Galahad, the perfect knight, 
mediaeval writers were creating the thing we call chivalry. They 
were taking the feudal society of their day and representing it 
not as it was but as they hoped it would become. 

The Classical Romances 

The two great romance cycles, important as they are, did not 
monopolize the attention of those who wrote poetry and prose 
in Languedoeil. There remains the matiere de Rome , of which 
our twelfth century poet spoke. He referred to romances 
on classical themes—^Eneas, Troy, Thebes, and, above all, 
Alexander. There was no one central figure such as Arthur or 
Charlemagne to draw these romances together. Furthermore, 
the classical romances lack the warmth and vitality of the two 
great cycles; their success is measured in terms of literary 
artifice and classical erudition. It is noteworthy that it was 
the lands farthest away from Rome that were fondest of classi¬ 
cal themes. In England they were very popular and in Scotland 
still more so; the farther from fact the freer the imagination. 
A measure of the popularity of classical themes in fourteenth 
century England is found in the words of the Monk in the 
Canterbury Tales: 

1 From Taylor, op. cit ., I, 592. 


438 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


“The storie of Alesandre is so comune 
That every wight that hath discrecioun 
Hath herd somwhat or al of his fortune.” 

The Literature of Languedoc 

Thus far, then, of the literature of Languedoeil. Less impor¬ 
tant, but requiring consideration, was the literature of Langue¬ 
doc, of the people whose word for “yes” was oc. In the 
linguistic and literary sense Languedoc was not limited to 
France south of the Loire; it extended into northeastern Spain 
and into northern Italy. The sunny Riviera, Spanish, French, 
and Italian, with its hinterland, was the forcing ground for a 
brilliant civilization. The heart of it was Provence, the first 
“province” conquered by the Romans outside Italy, sheltered 
from its neighbors on every side by mountains, yet open to the 
sea. Greek civilization had been planted in Provence and then 
the Latin had completely established itself. Barbarian invaders 
came and went, yet classical civilization never wholly died out 
in such Roman towns as Arles, Nimes, and Orange, where 
notable ruins still stand. In Provence, also, commerce revived 
earlier than elsewhere, outside Italy. Contact with the Saracen 
learning of Spain was established. A wealthy and enlightened 
aristocracy was matched by a merchant class even more 
wealthy, if less enlightened. Both classes began to indulge in 
the amenities of life and to cultivate its graces. 

In this soil flourished the literature of the troubadours. 
Theirs was poetry in lyric form, meant to be sung to the ac¬ 
companiment of a lute or other instrument. Love poetry had 
long been common among the Moslems of Spain, and influence 
from that quarter may be assumed. Exquisite artistry was dis¬ 
played by the troubadours, and half a dozen verse forms were 
invented to suit the varying themes. The device of rhyme was 
employed by the southern poets, and rhyme is thus a contribu¬ 
tion of the middle ages, since it is not found in classical litera¬ 
ture. The lyrics of the troubadours have been described as a 
“fascinating jingle of cunningly disposed rhymes, fleet as the 
feet of dancing youths, tinkling as silver bells”. 

That the wandering minstrels who composed and sang these 


MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE 


439 


lyrics were very numerous is evident from the fact that the 
names of more than five hundred of them are known to-day. 
Their patrons were lords and ladies of high degree. Naturally, 
many songs were sung in praise of the patrons; indeed a verse 
form was perfected for the purpose! Occasionally a patron 
turned performer, as in the case of William, duke of Aquitaine 
(d. 1127). Eleven of his poems survive. The ducal court was 
a center for the fashionable society of the day. The duke him¬ 
self was charming, witty, and scandalously incontinent. 

The principal theme of the southern lyrics was love. One 
misses the note of seriousness usually present in a love story of 
the north, however. These southerners seem to have been in 
love with love, for the most part. Nor did religion grip them— 
no Quest of the Grail for them. If a southern poet ever mentions 
the clergy it is to make fun of them. It will be remembered 
that the gay and godless society of the south was the soil in 
which heresy finally took root. There followed the conquest of 
the south of France by the north. Langue d’ceil became the 
language of Languedoc, in time; but long before that the voices 
of the troubadours were stilled. Attractive and interesting, the 
literature of the south of France, on the whole, is much inferior 
to that of the north. 


German Poets 

The literature of France, both north and south, had a pro¬ 
found influence on the rest of western Europe. Chansons de 
geste spread across the Rhine into Germany. Wolfram von 
Eschenbach gave to one of the Arthurian tales its finest form 
in his “Parzival”. Another German poet, Gottfried von Stras- 
burg, told the story of the Arthurian lovers, Tristram and 
Iseult, in his famous Tristram. The love poetry of the trouba¬ 
dours of Languedoc also had a great vogue in Germany. Min¬ 
nesingers, who made their homes at the courts of the German 
nobles, were the troubadours of the north. Greatest of these 
lyric poets was Walther von der Vogelweide, a native of Austria. 
In poetic skill he was perhaps the greatest of the minnesingers. 
But Walther was something more than a clever juggler of words. 
He was deeply interested in the political and religious questions 


440 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


of his day and he expressed his strong convictions fearlessly. 
We are not surprised to learn that Walther always wore out his 
welcome quickly and led a wandering life. 

The Poema del Cid 

Southward across the Pyrenees also the literature of France 
made its way. Catalan, spoken in northeastern Spain, was 
really a dialect of langue d’oc. As Catalan spread southward, 
during the long wars with the Moors, the literature of the trou¬ 
badours went with it. The language destined to become modern 
Spanish, however, was not Catalan but the speech of the Chris¬ 
tian kingdom of Castile. In this tongue, Castilian, was written, 
about the middle of the twelfth century, a famous chanson de 
geste which ranks to-day as the Spanish national epic. It is a 
tale of one Rodrigo Diaz de Binar (d. 1099), a famous hero of 
the wars with the Moslems. This great soldier is better known 
to us by his Arabic name of the Cid, and the epic is known in 
Spanish as Poema del Cid. Like the other epics of the middle 
ages the historical foundations of this tale are not substantial. 
Aside from its merit as a work of art the Cid ranks high as a 
general source of information about the civilization of the age 
in which it was written. 

Italian Literature 

Italy, the most completely under the dominance of Latin of 
all the lands of western Europe, was the last of all to develop a 
literature in the native tongue. Many dialects of Low Latin 
were spoken in the peninsula in the middle ages, and still are 
spoken. The struggle of the dialects to establish themselves as 
literary languages alongside Latin was for long an unequal one. 
Latin had dignity, precision, finish, and immense prestige. So 
long as the greatest minds were interested in theology, as in the 
earlier centuries, the preeminence of Latin continued. The 
twelfth century brought a revival of the study of Roman law in 
Italy, as we have seen. This gave Latin a new lease of life, for 
the classics of Roman law were in Latin and so the greatest 
minds continued to express their thoughts in that tongue. 

The beginnings of literature in Italian are found in the thir- 


MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE 


441 


teenth century. Troubadours, driven from the south of France 
by the Albigensian wars, fled to Italy. Some found a welcome 
at Palermo, the court of Frederick II. Himself a poet, the king 
encouraged the writing of poetry. Some thirty poets lived at 
court. They wrote in an Italian dialect but in the Provengal 
manner, imitating the troubadours. These poets of Frederick’s 
court were creative as well as imitative, however. To them is 
due the invention of the sonnet. In the north of Italy, about the 
same time, St. Francis began writing sermons in Italian prose. 
He was anxious to bring the Gospel to the people in their own 
tongue. 

The dialect destined to become modern Italian, however, 
was neither that of Frederick nor of Francis. It was the Low 
Latin tongue spoken in Tuscany, or, more precisely, in Florence, 
the chief city of Tuscany. This dialect possessed a dignity and 
a precision equal to that of Latin itself; and in melody and 
beauty it far surpassed the tongue of the Romans. Tuscan 
towns, in the thirteenth century, were thriving centers of com¬ 
merce and industry. A wealthy aristocracy had been created. 
This aristocracy was neither feudal nor ecclesiastical but was 
secular and urban. The young aristocrats of the Tuscan towns 
began to cultivate their intellectual and aesthetic tastes. Above 
all they made love. It was inevitable that these interests and 
activities should find literary expression. Poetry expressive of 
the ideals and the interests of this aristocracy began to be 
written in the lingua Toscana . Love and religion were the themes 
and both were treated in a mystic fashion. Jacopone da Todi 
(d. 1306), Guido Guinicelli, and Guido Cavalcanti (d. 1300), 
are the names of some of the earlier poets of this Tuscan school. 
They are of interest to us chiefly as the forerunners of the literary 
genius in whom this new Italian literature reached the greatest 
height it has ever attained, the immortal Dante. 

Dante 

Dante degli Alighieri (1265-1321) was born in Florence and 
grew up to take a prominent part in the political affairs of his 
native city. As a young man he wrote love poetry in his mother 
tongue, following the fad of the time. In view of his later erudi- 


442 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


tion Dante must have begun early to lay the foundations of the 
vast learning that informs his writings. Little else is known of 
his life save that he married and was the father of several chil¬ 
dren, that he was driven from Florence with others of his po¬ 
litical faction by a revolution, and that he spent the next 
twenty years in exile, first in hope and then in despair of being 
allowed to return to his beloved city. 

Before writing the work which is commonly called the master¬ 
piece of mediaeval literature Dante wrote several other works. 
In “ The New Life” {La Vita Nuova ) Dante shows how his own 
life was transformed by his love for Beatrice. Incidentally, 
Beatrice was not the name of his wife. Dante also wrote, in 
Latin, a defense of the Italian dialects in which he boldly as¬ 
serted their superiority to Latin. Mediaeval philosophy inter¬ 
ested Dante also, and he sought to make the rich feast of 
philosophical ideas available and palatable to the laity by 
writing a work on philosophy in the lingua Toscana. This book 
he called “ The Banquet” {II Convito). There were to have been 
fourteen books, or “courses”, in Dante’s feast, but he never 
got beyond the fourth. Dante also showed his continuing inter¬ 
est in politics in a book called De Monarchia. In this book, 
written in Latin and intended for circulation among the scholars 
of Europe, Dante attacked the central problem of mediaeval 
political life, namely, the relations between church and state. 
He sided with the state and supported his arguments with a 
learning as wide and as deep as any champion of the church 
had ever displayed. Dante struck a note that vibrates in our 
own age when he pleaded, in this work, for permanent peace. 
Only in a state of universal peace, he argued, can men develop 
their powers of mind and spirit. 

Dante’s “Comedy” was written in the last years of his life. 
It is the story of the life of the human soul in all its aspects. 
Dante tells the story in the first person and it is, in a way, the 
history of his own soul. Dante calls his poem a “Comedy”, 
not a “Tragedy”, because the soul, struggling through Hell and 
Purgatory, at last attains the eternal felicity of Paradise. His 
Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise are literal enough; indeed the 
poet’s vivid imagination is given free rein throughout. However, 


MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE 


443 


one can see that his concept of Hell, for example, was meta¬ 
physical as well as physical. It is the place for those who, in 
life, gave free rein to their passions. In Hell they are still in 
bondage to the passions which gripped them on Earth. There 
they struggle hopelessly, blaspheming the God who condemned 
them to everlasting torment. Dante’s moral seems to be that 
though life may be a failure, as Dante’s own life was, the human 
soul need not fail. It need not fail if it will only struggle to the 
utmost, making use of its God-given powers. 

It will be impossible even to recapitulate the principal develop¬ 
ments of the “Divine Comedy”. We may note, however, that 
this great epic sums up the fundamental ideas of the middle 
ages. Indeed, Dante’s poem is the highest and the most com¬ 
plete expression of mediaeval life. Its problem is the soul’s sal¬ 
vation, the fundamental problem of all mediaeval men. The 
Queen of Heaven intervenes in the poet’s behalf as the poem 
opens and the “mediaeval goddess” gives the redeemed soul her 
benediction at the close. The poem is mediaeval, further, in its 
encyclopedic character. The whole field of human knowledge 
and even of human feeling is traversed. It is mediaeval in its ac¬ 
ceptance of scholastic philosophy; mediaeval, too, in the startling 
contrasts, with which the poem abounds, between the most 
exalted idealism and the most sordid realities. Further, Dante 
is mediaeval in his fondness for classical allusion and in his 
uncritical use of the classics. In the Comedy he quotes Aristotle 
three hundred times, Vergil, two hundred, Ovid, one hundred, 
and Cicero, Lucian, Horace, Livy, Boethius, and Orosius, many 
times each. Most frequent of all, and this too is mediaeval, are 
Dante’s Biblical quotations, his references to St. Jerome’s 
famous version totaling more than five hundred. Finally, 
Dante is mediaeval in the sense that in writing the Comedy he 
was working out his own salvation. For the poem “in its long 
making made the poet into the likeness of itself.” 1 Dante held 
that every human soul through its own valiant and unceasing 
efforts could redeem itself from the Hell of enslavement to 
passion and, passing through the refining fires of Purgatory, 
attain the Paradise of enduring and triumphant happiness. 

1 Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind , II, 589. 


444 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


For Further Reading 

C. H. Grandgent, From Latin to Italian 
Kuno Francke, History of German Literature 

E. Faguet, Literary History of France 

J. J. Jusserand, Literary History of the English People 
H. 0. Taylor, The Mediseval Mind, I, chap. 24; II, chaps. 25, 27, 31, 
32, 33, 44 

A. Luchaire, Social France in the time of Philip Augustus 
J. H. Smith, The Troubadours at Home, 2 vols. 

H. J. Chaytor, The Troubadours 

G. W. Cox and E. H. Jones, Popular Romances of the Middle Ages 
Chanson de Roland. A good translation by C. S. Moncrieff 
Aucassin et Nicoletie. A good translation by Andrew Lang 

F. C. Nicholson, Old German Songs (Translation of songs of the 

Minnesingers) 

S. Evans, The High History of the Holy Grail (A translation of Parzival ) 
A. M. Huntingdon, The Poem of the Cid (Text and translation) 
Dante, Divine Comedy (Excellent translation by C. E. Norton) 


CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 


MEDIAEVAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE; 

THE CATHEDRALS 

Art has been defined as “the right way of doing right things”. 
In learning what mediaeval men thought were “right things”, 
therefore, and what they thought was the right way of doing 
them, we shall learn more than a little about the middle ages. 
We shall not be surprised to find that mediaeval man thought 
the right thing to do was to glorify God by building beautiful 
churches in His praise and for His worship. The age of faith 
was an age of cathedrals. 

Strictly speaking, a cathedral is the church of a bishop, the 
ecclesiastical center of a diocese. Cathedra is a Greek word mean¬ 
ing “chair”, and the reference is to an actual chair, placed in 
the choir of the church, which served as the bishop’s throne. 
We use the word in its original meaning when we refer to of¬ 
ficial utterances as being ex cathedra. By extension of meaning, 
however, cathedral has come to mean any church of unusual 
size and architectural importance. 

Cathedral Building a Civic Enterprise 

Cathedrals, and more especially those built in the more 
mature style known as Gothic, were usually built in towns. 
They were expressive of the civic pride of the townsmen, as well 
as of the authority of the resident bishop. Town vied with 
town in an effort to build cathedrals “bigger and better”. All 
sorts and conditions of men joined in the cathedral building 
enterprise. The most commanding site in the city would be 
selected. Men and women would then hitch themselves to the 
carts of stone, hauling them up the slope as a matter of piety. 
Master masons of the local gild designed the structures; in¬ 
deed, a cathedral design was usually the daring adventure in 
stone of the artisans themselves, not the carefully calculated 
blueprint of a professional architect. 

445 


446 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Once built, the cathedral became a sort of “ civic center ”. 
On days of civic rejoicing or mourning the populace assembled 
in the cathedral nave in thousands. The gilds of the city en¬ 
tered into a generous rivalry in the cathedral’s embellishment. 
The interior was decorated with valuable tapestries, mosaics, 
and paintings. The choicest works of artificers in stone and in 
metal found in the cathedral aisles and chapels their most ap¬ 
propriate setting. There, too, trophies of war were displayed, 
like the bronze horses brought back by the Venetians from Con¬ 
stantinople. Finally, the great and famous dead were buried 
beneath the stones of the cathedral pavement and the walls 
were lined with monuments to their memory. 

Center of civic assembly and worship, art museum, hall of 
trophies, hall of fame, the mediaeval cathedral was the expres¬ 
sion of an age that has passed and that will not return. The 
modern age cannot build cathedrals. Christendom is no longer 
a unit. The best minds do not all devote their talents and 
energies to the service of the church. “Cathedrals of business” 
are more in our line and the skyscraper is the most character¬ 
istic expression of the present age. A great liner was moving 
slowly up the harbor to New York through the dusk of an 
autumn day, at the close of the War. Cardinal Mercier, Belgian 
hero and saint, was on board. Suddenly the famous skyline 
came clearly within view. Reporters crowded round the slight 
and ascetic figure of the cardinal, to note his first “reactions”. 
“Oh, you wonderful Americans,” he exclaimed, pointing to a 
skyward reaching spire, “there’s your cathedral.” “No”, was 
the reply, “that’s our five and ten cent store.” 

Romanesque Architecture 

Mediaeval architecture passed through two main phases, 
an earlier phase known as Romanesque and a later and more 
mature phase called Gothic. Romanesque is to art as Romance 
is to language—both were in origin Roman. Gothic, on the 
other hand, was not Roman but northern. Its source was the 
north of France, the region where the finest vernacular literature 
of Europe was being produced at the same time. It may be 
wondered what the Goths had to do with the north of France. 


MEDIAEVAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE 


447 


The answer is, nothing. The name Gothic was fastened upon 
the beautiful monuments of mediaeval architecture by men of 
the Renascence who affected to despise them. Moliere refers 
contemptuously to 

“The rank taste of Gothic monuments 
Those odious monsters of the ignorant centuries 
Which the torrents of barbarism spewed forth.” 

Even so have “Hun” and “Bolshevik” been used as terms of 
opprobrium. 

The Romanesque phase of mediaeval architecture lasted from 
the revival of building in stone to the middle of the twelfth 
century. The art of building in stone never died out in Italy, 
though for some centuries following the fall of Rome few notable 
churches were built. The style of church buildings in certain 
parts of Italy in the early mediaeval centuries was strongly in¬ 
fluenced by Byzantine models, for a living art of architecture 
had produced a number of famous churches at Constantinople, 
including the incomparable St. Sophia. Ravenna, and later 
on Venice, were the chief ports of entry for Byzantine influ¬ 
ence. North of the Alps building in stone practically ceased 
after the fall of Rome. Churches were built of wood, chiefly 
oak. What they were like we can know little about, since very 
few have survived. A single Saxon church, built of oak, still 
stands in England. 

The conquest of northern and central Italy by Charlemagne 
inaugurated the age of Romanesque north of the Alps. Stone 
masons and artisans from Lombardy carried Roman and By¬ 
zantine influence to the north. One reason why ecclesiastics 
of the north were anxious to build in stone was the fire hazard 
to which wooden churches were exposed. Even the stone 
churches had wooden roofs, at first, for builders were long in 
learning how to rear vaulted roofs of stone. The flat wooden 
roof remained a menace to the whole structure. It is an unusual 
cathedral which does not present a record of destruction by 
fire two or even three times. 

The civil wars and the renewal of invasions slowed down 
cathedral building in France during the ninth century. Leader- 


448 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


ship then passed to Germany, where the strong Saxon emperors 
gave Romanesque builders their patronage in the tenth and 
eleventh centuries. Germany has to-day, in Bamberg and 
Speyer, the finest Romanesque cathedrals north of the Alps. 
During the great revival of religion of the eleventh century the 
vogue of Romanesque became more general. As a contemporary 
remarked, it “snowed” churches throughout northern Europe. 
The Cluny abbots set the pace. There was a good deal of the 
lordly and aristocratic about them; they loved to build sump¬ 
tuously and on a grand scale. Italy was ransacked for ideas, 
materials, and artisans. From the Continent Romanesque art 
was carried by the Normans to England. Norman archbishops, 
bishops, and abbots set about replacing the wooden churches of 
Saxon times with splendid structures of stone, not a few of 
which still stand, commanding our respect and admiration. 
Many well qualified critics definitely prefer the massive sim¬ 
plicity and beautiful proportions of the Norman, as English 
Romanesque architecture is called, to any later phase. 

Massiveness is the principal quality of Romanesque. It sug¬ 
gests the power that was once Rome’s. The walls are thick and 
the windows small. The arches are semicircular. The piers and 
columns are heavy, as they have to be to bear the weight im¬ 
posed upon them. The interior is dark. In Italy, the true home 
of Romanesque, the brilliant sunshine of the cathedral squares 
does something to relieve or even to justify the gloom of the 
cathedral interior; but in the north skies are more frequently 
overcast, thus helping to create “the ideal gloom in which to 
worship a relentless and tortured Christ”, as an unfriendly 
critic puts it. Attempts were made to illuminate the domes and 
half-domes of Romanesque churches by the use of mosaics. 
These consist of thousands of pieces of colored glass or marble 
which catch the light and reflect it in every direction. Brightly 
colored marbles were used to sheath the walls in the wealthier 
churches; and paint was freely used also, especially on the sur¬ 
face of the rounded vaults over the nave and transepts. 

The ground plan of Romanesque cathedrals was inherited 
from the Christian churches of the fourth century. The early 

churches followed the simple plan of a long hall with a semi- 

% 


MEDIAEVAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE 


449 



5 0 5 10 15, 


circular apse at the end opposite the entrance. The axis of the 
hall ran east and west. The apse, with its high altar where the 
clergy celebrated Mass, was always at the 
East end. This orientation of the Christian 
church still prevails, though the East end is 
now sometimes a conventional “East”. 

The long hall of the early church was the 
place of assembly for the laity and became 
known as the nave (from the Greek naos, 
meaning temple). The hall was usually di¬ 
vided lengthwise into three compartments by 
two long rows of columns. The central com¬ 
partment was wider and had a loftier ceiling 
than the side compartments had. The side 
compartments were known as aisles, or, more 
specifically, as the North aisle and the South 
aisle of the nave.' By making the roofs of the 
aisles low and that of the central compartment 

high, the builders avoided Pl £ n ° f b ™ ilica OF 
roofing over the whole width Rome (432 a.d.) 
of the nave in one span. 

Small windows let into the wall of the nave 
above the roof of the aisle, on either side, 
brought light into the church. These early 
churches, it may be added, were roofed with 
timber. Thus far of the early Christian church, 
the ground plan of which was inherited by the 
Romanesque builders of the tenth and eleventh 
centuries. 

The principal development in ground plan 
in the hands of later builders was the choir. 
The long aisled hall or nave, the place of the 

10 0 10 30 60 Peet 0 ’ ^ 

5., ,9 5 ip is Metrea laity, remained essentially unchanged through- 
Plan of Romanesque out the mediaeval period. The rounded apse 
Late TitiT century at the East end was extended and enlarged 
into a choir, symbolic of the great growth in 
importance and in power of the clergy. The apse was, so to 
speak, moved eastward a considerable distance and an aisled 






























450 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


hall, often as wide as the nave, though always shorter, 
was inserted between the apse and the nave. Thus room was 
made for the clergy, who alone were admitted to the choir. At 
the point where the nave and choir met short wings were added 
on each side. These were called transepts, the North and the 
South. The axis of the transepts was at right angles to the 
common axis of the nave and choir. 

Romanesque builders learned to roof their churches with 
rounded vaults of stone. These are called barrel vaults, though 
they are also known as wagon vaults, from their resemblance 
to the top of a covered wagon. Where the long vault of the nave 
and choir crossed the shorter vault of the transepts a cross vault 
was sometimes built, with two curved and intersecting lines or 
“ribs”. Nave, choir, and transepts were not always built to 
the same height, however; indeed they were rarely so. Builders 
solved the problem of covering over the “crossing” of the roofs 
in various ways, some very ingenious. Very often a beautiful 
tower or spire was built over the crossing. Towers or spires 
were also built at the corners of the nave, at the West end, in 
many cases. 

The West front, or fagade as it is called, was regarded as the 
formal entrance to the church. As such its exterior was lavishly 
embellished with deeply recessed portals and with sculptured 
figures of saints and martyrs. The moldings of the arches over 
doors and windows were ornamented with varied forms of 
decorative detail, carved in stone. The three portals of the 
fagade symbolized the Trinity. The long axis of the nave and 
choir crossed by the shorter axis of the transepts suggested the 
shape and proportions of a cross. It is doubtful whether 
mediaeval builders deliberately adopted a cruciform plan, 
however. Inside and outside the cathedral was made to 
tell the stories of the Bible and to portray religious truths, 
in mosaic, in stained glass windows, in the carvings of the 
choir screen and choir stalls, and in other ways endlessly 
varied. Every cathedral, in short, was and is a book, a 
picture book, richly illuminated for an age that could not read. 
It takes time, even now, to “read”, heed, and inwardly digest 
such a book. 


MEDIAEVAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE 


451 


How Gothic Differs from Romanesque 

The change from Romanesque to Gothic is one “from mas¬ 
siveness and gloom to delicacy and light.” The Romanesque 
church, it has been said, was designed from the base upward; 
the Gothic church, from the vault downward. We must under¬ 
stand clearly that Gothic is a development out of Romanesque, 
however. The ground plan perfected by Romanesque builders 
was taken over by their Gothic successors intact. Gothic repre¬ 
sents a change of spirit rather than of form. 

In the first place, Gothic builders substituted the pointed 
arch for the semicircular arch. Some Gothic arches are three or 
four times as long as they are wide. The outward thrust of such 
arches is much less than that of the round arch. The supporting 
walls, columns, or piers of these arches could therefore be made 
less heavy. Thus the effect of massiveness vanished and that 
of lightness took its place. The pointed arch itself suggests 
slenderness and springiness. The eye is carried upward. A 
second important departure from Romanesque was the sub¬ 
stitution of ribbed vaulting for rounded or barrel vaulting. The 
ribs of a vault were built first, spreading outward and upward 
from the supporting walls or piers on each side of the space to 
be roofed, and meeting in the center. The interstices between 
the ribs were then filled in with masonry suitably rounded to 
conform to the curving lines of the ribs. Of course a cross- 
section of such a ribbed vault was not a semicircular arch, as in 
Romanesque. It was, rather, a broken arch, as the French 
term for ribbed vault, arc brise, suggests. If you stand in the 
middle of the floor space under the ridgepole and glance up¬ 
ward you may see the ribs of the arched vault collecting the 
weight of the roof and concentrating it at a few points. It has 
been pointed out that the skeleton of a cathedral is as beautiful 
as the skeleton of an animal. 

Since the weight of the vault was concentrated at a few 
points, piers could be built into the walls at those points and the 
intervening wall spaces could then be made as thin as desired. 
Indeed, these intervening spaces came to be largely frames for 
the magnificent windows which were and are the glory of 


452 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Gothic. Piers built into the walls to strengthen them are called 
buttresses. It will be recognized that however successfully sup¬ 
porting buttresses might solve the problem of the outward 
thrust of the vaults over the aisles, it left the vault over the 
central space, the widest and loftiest of all, unprovided for. It 
will be recalled that Romanesque builders had pierced the 
walls of the nave, above the aisle roofs, with a row of windows. 
Gothic builders, actuated by their passion for lightness, wanted 
to make the windows ever larger and the walls thinner. But how 
could such flimsy walls be made to sup¬ 
port the weight of the central vault and 
resist its outward thrust? There came an 
inspiration of genius. From each heavy 
buttress built into the outer wall of the 
aisle, on either side, lean a stone prop 
against the upper wall of the central 
space. These stone props, called flying 
buttresses, represent a third way in 
which Gothic made a structural de¬ 
parture from Romanesque. 

The Spread of Gothic 

The Gothic “revolution” began in the 
north of France, and there its most 
splendid achievements still stand. The 
cathedral of Noyon, the earliest Gothic 
structure of importance, was begun 
about 1140; Sens was begun in 1144; 
scale of 6 lJLL±Lj Metres Notre Dame of Paris, about 1162; 

scale of ^ 11 | 5 l ° reet Bourges, in 1172; Chartres, in 1194; 

Plan ° F Cathedra^ r°u EN , Rheims, in 1211; and Amiens, in 1215. 

Of these the cathedral of Amiens may be 
accounted the finest, with Chartres and Rheims following in 
the order named. The subjective element in art is strong 
however, and there are many who differ from this judgment. 
From France Gothic spread to England, then a cultural annex 
of the north of France. Canterbury was begun in 1174 by a 
master mason from Sens. The choir of Lincoln was built about 












MEDIAEVAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE 


453 


1200, the rest of this notable cathedral being Romanesque. 
Westminster Abbey was rebuilt in the Gothic style in the reign 
of Henry III (1216-1272). Salisbury Cathedral, the only Eng¬ 
lish cathedral consistently of one style throughout, was begun 
in 1220. In the middle of the thirteenth century, then, in both 
France and England, Gothic had reached its height. 

In neither Germany nor Italy did Gothic make itself at home. 
The cathedral of Milan is the sole example of the Gothic style 
in Italy, and it dates from late in the middle ages (1387-1418). 
In Christian Spain, however, Gothic found important admirers 
and imitators in the builders of the cathedrals of Seville, Toledo, 
and Burgos. The over-decorated and florid character of these 
three, and especially of the last one named, owes something to 
Moorish influence, no doubt. 

Gothic Windows 

The glory of Gothic, as has been said, were the windows. 
The windows were not only very numerous but also, in many 
instances, very large. In York Minster there is a window larger 
than a tennis court. Obviously a window of that size, or any 
window filling the whole wall space between two piers, could 
not be dealt with by a glazier as a single unit. A row of lancet 
windows was the usual arrangement, each window being sepa¬ 
rated from its neighbors by narrow mullions of stone. These 
stone mullions, meeting and intersecting at the tops of the lan¬ 
cets, continued into the upper part of the great window, branch¬ 
ing out and interlacing in intricate geometric patterns. Window 
tracery is one of the most delightful features of Gothic. Indeed 
the history of Gothic architecture has been divided into various 
periods according to the type of window tracery—“decorated”, 
“perpendicular”, “flamboyant”, and so on—prevalent at the 
time. The flamboyant, or “flamelike”, tracery is the most 
beautiful of all. 

The stone tracery of the windows formed a framework for the 
glass. The art of making stained glass came to Italy from the 
East by way of Constantinople. Italian artisans introduced it to 
the north of France during the twelfth century, and the French 
soon surpassed all others in the production of beautifully col- 


454 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


ored glass. The color is in the glass itself, not painted on the 
surface. Various metallic oxides, when mixed with molten glass, 
produce the primary colors. The French artisans learned to 
produce many secondary hues and shades by dipping their 
blowpipes in molten glass of two colors. The flat bubble when 
opened out produced a small sheet of glass of one color through 
a part of its depth and then of another, with a resultant color, 
when viewed against the light, different from either. Thus blue 
on yellow becomes green, and so on. Of course sheets of glass 
produced in this crude fashion were not very large. To fill a 
window hundreds of bits of glass might be required. The glazier 
cunningly wound a narrow strip of lead, with channeling on 
both sides of it, around and among the separate bits of glass, 
holding them closely and firmly together. The combining of 
many bits of colored glass into a single window actually height¬ 
ened the color effect, for the eye does not analyze such a window 
into its component color parts but receives it as a symphony of 
color. It will be recognized, too, that the very imperfections of 
crudely made glass increased the color effect. Tiny bubbles and 
opacities and slightly varying thicknesses refract the rays of 
light, producing a mellow effect. 

Gothic windows became increasingly pictorial, later on. That 
is, the glazier combined his bits of colored glass to form pictures 
of saints and to tell the stories of the Bible. He used the lead 
strips very cleverly to follow the lines of the drawing, thus mak¬ 
ing the figures stand out clearly. The fundamental appeal of 
these windows to us to-day, however, is their color, and there¬ 
fore we like the earlier windows best. Their rich symphonies of 
jewel-like colors make a powerful appeal to the emotions. It is 
generally accepted that the glass of Chartres cathedral is the 
finest in the world. 


Gothic Sculpture 

Another great art with which mediaeval cathedrals were em¬ 
bellished was sculpture. In the middle ages sculpture was al¬ 
ways subordinated to architecture. Carvings were used to 
decorate the capitals of columns, low reliefs to fill in the space 
(tympanum) over doorways, and statues to fill niches in the 


MEDIEVAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE 


455 


portals. There was a prejudice against statues in the earlier 
centuries because of their pagan associations. Carolingian 
churches have no statues; the sculptors expressed their deco¬ 
rative impulses by carving foliage and scroll work. The carving 
in stone of leaves, flowers, and fruits never ceased, in fact. 
Those who think mediaeval man took no interest in nature 
should study the sculpture of mediaeval cathedrals. On the 
capitals of Southwell cathedral, England, were carved, with 
great fidelity to nature, every kind of leaf that grows in Sher¬ 
wood Forest, on whose borders this lovely Norman church 
stands. 

The prejudice against representing the human figure com¬ 
pletely vanished, in the course of time. On the exteriors of the 
greater cathedrals thousands of figures were carved in relief or 
set in niches as statues. Chartres cathedral bears on its ex¬ 
terior more than four thousand statues. It will be impossible 
to trace the development of mediaeval sculpture here. Suffice it 
to say that it is seen at its best in the north of France and at 
the great cathedrals of Chartres, Rheims, Laon, Amiens, Paris, 
and Bourges. The figures are architectural in quality, holding 
themselves stiff and straight, and are conventionalized for the 
most part. Only late in the middle ages did portraiture become 
an objective. Within the limits imposed by architecture and 
convention the mediaeval sculptor exercised his art with real 
genius, however, as an examination of the mediaeval master¬ 
pieces will reveal. The two sculptors whose work marked the 
beginning of the Italian Renascence, Niccolo Pisano and his 
son Giovanni, owed much to the mediaeval sculpture of the 
north of France. 


Mediaeval Music 

No list of mediaeval arts in the service of the church would 
be complete without music. Ancient music is forever silent; it 
is mediaeval music that has come down to us. We have learned 
something of the liturgy of the mediaeval church. The liturgy 
(literally, “work of the people”) was a representation of the 
work of Christ and the Christian people. Every word of the 
liturgy was sung, or at least intoned. Solo voices recited the 


456 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


words of Christ, for example, and a choir uttered the voice of 
the Christian people. Much of the liturgy was therefore antipho- 
nal in character. The music to which the words of the liturgy 
were set is known as Gregorian. Pope Gregory V (590-604) 
founded a school of singing at Rome and made a collection of 
existing chants. He may have composed chants of his own, 
but none of his original compositions are known to us. From 
Rome Gregorian music spread throughout western Europe. 
St. Augustine introduced it into England and St. Boniface, into 
Saxony. Charlemagne did much to increase its vogue in his 
day. Gregorian music became as characteristic a feature of the 
mediseval church as the Latin language. In the middle ages it 
was deemed the only music of artistic excellence. 

The would-be expert in Gregorian to-day must devote to the 
subject the study of a lifetime. Even so, a few observations 
may be ventured here. We shall come close to the heart of the 
matter if we remember that in Gregorian the melody and the 
rhythm, if we may so speak of it, are held in strict subordina¬ 
tion to the words. What is being said is of supreme importance. 
Every syllable must be distinctly uttered. The rhythm follows 
the sense freely. There are no measured intervals of time, as 
in modern music. The words of the liturgy are Latin prose. 
The rhythm of Gregorian is, therefore, the rhythm of Latin 
prose, in which the accent never goes back of the second from 
the last syllable of a word. Choral pieces are sung in unison. 
They were written to be sung without harmonic accompani¬ 
ment. Gregorian music, or plain song, as it is called, is not 
music for music’s sake but music for religion’s sake. Such a 
limitation might seem to be a fatal handicap to artistry. It is 
not so. The melodies of Gregorian are profoundly moving. In 
their various modes they can be spirited and joyful, sweet and 
dreamy, solemn, majestic, and sublime. 

The church also adapted folk songs as hymns, to be used in 
congregational singing. These had a definite and measured 
rhythm, each syllable being sung, in general, to one note only 
of the melody. The troubadours and trouveres of the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries not only wrote verses; they set them 
to music. These musical compositions have survived to a sur- 


MEDIAEVAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE 


457 


prising extent, and are being studied and enjoyed to-day. 
They are remarkably like modern music, in measured rhythm, 
in melody, and in harmony. 

For Further Reading 

Cambridge Mediseval History , VI, chap. 22 
J. H. Parker, ABC of Gothic Architecture 

S. Reinach, Apollo: an illustrated manual of the history of art 

T. G. Jackson, Byzantine and Romanesque Architecture 

C. G. Crump and E. F. Jacob, The Legacy of the Middle Ages, chap. 2 
E. B. O’Reilly, How France built her Cathedrals 
E. Male, Religious Art in France in the Thirteenth Century 
Joseph and Elizabeth Pennell, French Cathedrals 
R. A. Cram, The Substance of Gothic 

C. H. Moore, The Development and Character of Gothic Architecture, 
2 yols. (2d ed.) 

A. Gardner, French Sculpture of the Thirteenth Century 

H. Arnold, Stained Glass of the Middle Ages in England and France 

C. H. Sherill, Stained Glass Tours in France 

H. Adams, Mont St. Michel and Chartres 

R. C. Hope, Mediaeval Music 

C. Gray, History of Music 


CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 


MEDIAEVAL FRANCE: LEADERSHIP OF THE 
MONARCHY 

The central fact in the early history of France was feudalism. 
We have seen in an earlier chapter that France, in the tenth and 
eleventh centuries, was merely a confederation of great feu¬ 
datories, their sole bond of union a monarchy which the feu¬ 
datories themselves had set up. We have seen, further, that 
France was divided culturally as well as feudally; in particular, 
that there was almost no likeness between the north of France 
and the south. Finally, we have seen that the early Capetian 
monarchs, weak as they were, seemed conscious of the destiny 
that was theirs as the leaders in the fashioning, out of diverse 
and discordant elements, of a nation-state. 

By the end of the thirteenth century France was the foremost 
power in Europe. In achieving this result the leadership of the 
monarchy was all-important. “ France was made by her forty 
kings,” is the saying. Of the forty, seven fall in the two cen¬ 
turies from 1108 to 1314. Not all of them were dominant and 
forceful, but it is a remarkable fact that four of the seven kin gs 
were men of unusual ability; and by a curious and lucky alterna¬ 
tion each of the three weak reigns was sandwiched between 
two strong ones. 

It is neither possible nor desirable to proceed through the 
centuries reign by reign. Instead, we may note two main lines 
along which the growth of the royal power proceeded. First, 
there was the growth of the royal domain, the personal fief of 
the Capetian monarchs. Practically the whole central portion 
of France was ultimately ruled by the Capetians in this direct 
way, and the king of France, so to speak, was his own biggest 
baron. Secondly, there was a great increase in the political 
authority of the monarch, his judging, law-giving, and taxing 
powers. To put it briefly, we may say that the growth of the 
royal power was both geographical and institutional. 

458 


MEDIEVAL FRANCE 


459 


Growth of the Royal Domain 

Let us study the expansion of the royal domain. We have 
seen that the “duchy of France”, the private fief of the Cape- 
tians, was a compact block of territory lying between the Somme 
and the Loire. Culturally homogeneous, fertile, and well 
watered, this Isle-de-France became the home of the twelfth 
century renascence north of the Alps. Here Gothic architects 
built their loveliest cathedrals. Here poets in the vernacular 
elaborated the Carolingian and Arthurian Cycles. Here Abelard 
taught and here the University of Paris was founded. Cultural 
preeminence is often found in association with political leader¬ 
ship. It was so in this case. Louis VI (1108-1137), first of the 
strong kings of the period under review, rendered his greatest 
service to the monarchy by overthrowing the small nobles who 
were his own vassals within the duchy of France. Thus his 
successors could count upon the undivided resources of their 
own private fief in the long struggle for authority with the great 
feudatories. King Louis found the task he had set himself so 
completely engrossing that he rarely left the royal domain, 
content to let his relations with the great nobles of France be 
“international” in character. His nickname le Gros (“the Fat”) 
is misleading. His corpulence did not lead to lethargy. It was 
a reservoir of vitality and energy, as his other nickname, le 
Batailleur, suggests. 

During the next reign, that of Louis VII (1137-1180), the 
French monarchy stood still, if it did not lose ground. This was 
due, in part, to the character of the king, a perfect specimen of 
the learned and “pious” type. France had one Louis the Pious 
in her catalogue of monarchs, so this one was called Louis le 
Jeune, the boy who never grew up. He made at least two grave 
mistakes, from the point of view of the growth of the royal 
power. One was his Crusade (the Second, 1147-1150). We 
know what an utter failure this was. The second mistake was 
his divorce. In 1137, the year of his accession, he had married 
Eleanor of Acquitaine, heiress to the great fief, or complex of 
fiefs, built up by the dukes of Acquitaine. Covering almost a 
quarter of the present territory of France, and including such 


460 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


counties as Poitou, Saintonge, and Guienne, Eleanor’s dowry 
was more than twice as large as the Capetian domain. The 
royal pair were not happy together. During the Crusade they 
quarreled and Eleanor came home alone. Added to incom- 
patability of temper was the fact that in fifteen years of married 
life Eleanor had borne the king two daughters but no son. In 
1152 the king’s counselors “discovered” that Louis and 
Eleanor were related by blood more closely than the canon law 
allows, so the marriage was annulled. The saintly Bernard ap¬ 
proved. The incompatability of Louis and Eleanor may be 
regarded as a symbol of the lack of cultural affinity between the 
north and the south of France. 

A promising step in the expansion of the royal domain thus 
proved premature. But worse was to follow. As Eleanor and 
her suite rode southward ardent wooers set out in pursuit. Not 
a few had armed knights at their back to give rough emphasis 
to their wooing. Eleanor made swift choice. Less than two 
months after the annulment of her first marriage she rewed. 
Her choice was a youth not yet twenty, and some fifteen years 
her junior. This bold and successful youth was already count 
of Anjou and Maine and duke of Normandy. With Acquitaine 
added, his French fiefs covered more than one-third of the 
present territory of France, making the young bridegroom a 
far more important figure in France than the king. The year 
after his marriage Eleanor’s new husband became king of 
England, as Henry II. The French king could make no head¬ 
way against Henry. Eleanor, who had borne Louis no sons, 
bore Henry II four, including Richard and John, later kings of 
England. As these sons grew to manhood King Louis took what 
advantage he could of their quarrels with their father. Louis 
himself married again and in 1165 got his long desired son. 
This boy was crowned king in Louis’s presence at Rheims in 
1179, and the following year Louis le Jeune died. 

Philip Augustus 

Louis VII’s successor was Philip II (1180-1223), born of 
Louis’s second marriage. Better known as Philip Augustus, 
Philip II was perhaps the greatest king in the mediaeval history of 


MEDIAEVAL FRANCE 


461 


France, and certainly one of the great statesmen of European 
history. His dominant quality was political sagacity, but he 
also displayed great military ability and even, in his siegecraft, 
considerable skill as an engineer. He could be as treacherous 
and cruel as any of his mediaeval contemporaries if it suited his 
purpose, but he was loyal and even generous to those who 
served him faithfully. Philip is renowned as the founder of the 
University of Paris and as the builder of much of Notre Dame. 
He made of Paris, indeed, the first modern capital, paving her 
streets and embellishing the city with public works. Thus was 
begun, or at least greatly forwarded, the process which has 
made Paris the focal point of French life, whether political or 
cultural. 

It was the great expansion of the royal domain which is 
Philip Augustus’s principal claim to fame, however. Before the 
close of his reign of more than forty years he had seen the royal 
domain multiplied by three. Philip’s success was in the north 
only; the south remained aloof. First, there were important 
gains to the northeast, in Artois, Vermandois, and Amiens. 
The first came to Philip through his marriage and the others 
through succession disputes. To the west Philip’s progress was 
very difficult, for there his opponent was the king of England, 
Philip’s greatest vassal. Philip made little advance against 
either Henry II (d. 1189) or Richard I. We have seen some¬ 
thing of the rivalry of Philip and Richard during the Third 
Crusade. An attack of “diplomatic” illness led to Philip’s early 
return from Palestine, leaving Richard behind. Philip had 
sworn not to violate Richard’s territories, but he promptly in¬ 
vaded Normandy. Richard regained nearly all he had lost, 
on his return in 1195, and then, before he died, built Chateau 
Gaillard on a high bluff overlooking the Seine, to guard Nor¬ 
mandy against future invasion. 

For nearly twenty years Philip had wrestled with Henry and 
with Richard with no apparent success. Yet time was on the 
side of Philip, had he but known; the English were fighting 
against the future. Culturally the Normans and the “French” 
had much in common. Further, the Normans, barons and 
townsmen alike, had latterly suffered many misgivings about 


462 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


their dukes, the English kings. Taxation had become fright¬ 
fully heavy. The share of the Normans in Richard’s enormous 
ransom was a third larger than that of all England. Another 
supertax had been levied on the Normans to pay for Chateau 
Gaillard. John, who succeeded Richard in 1199 as Norman duke 
and English king, continued the heavy taxation of his brother 
and father. The Normans began to wonder, and not for the 
first time, whether loyalty to their dukes paid. 

Of course Philip was bound to pick a quarrel with King John 
sooner or later. The relations between lord and vassal were 
regulated by a contract covering many items; and there were 
therefore as many chances for disagreement as there were items 
in the contract. The special controversy between Philip and 
John is of no great importance, but it is of some interest. In 
1200 John deprived Hugh de Lusignan, one of his vassals in the 
south of France, of his fiancee, and then married the lady him¬ 
self. This, by the way, is a mild sample of John’s average pro¬ 
cedure. Count Hugh, defrauded by his own lord, appealed to 
his lord’s lord, namely, Philip II, for redress. Philip cited John 
to appear before the Great Council of France to answer the 
charge. John did not appear, was again cited, again failed to 
appear, and was a third time summoned, as the feudal law pro¬ 
vides. Failing to appear on final summons, judgment was 
entered in default. John was sentenced (1202) to the forfeiture 
of all his French fiefs. Thus was Philip equipped with a perfect 
legal case and John placed wholly in the wrong. 

But it was one thing to pronounce sentence in the middle 
ages and another to execute it. John prepared to make a fight 
of it and he was by no means a weakling. Philip promptly in¬ 
vested Chateau Gaillard, with its triple walls, and, after an 
eight months’ siege, took it. This achievement must rank as one 
of the most notable in the military history of the middle ages. 
Normandy then went over to Philip’s side, and the counties of 
Maine, Anjou, and Touraine quickly followed. 

These were stunning blows and to make matters worse, John’s 
English barons refused to support him. A powerful combina¬ 
tion against Philip was forming on the continent, however, and 
this John joined. Two of Philip’s vassals, the count of Boulogne 


MEDIAEVAL FRANCE 


463 


and the count of Flanders, had combined with the emperor 
Otto IV in an invasion of France from the east. The French 
king gathered an army of barons, clergy, and townsmen and 



M. & V. CAMB. MASS, 


at Bouvines, in 1214, won his greatest military victory. In the 
make-up of his army and the acclaim with which the victory 
was received, at least in the north of France, Bouvines may 
justly be called the first “national” event in the history of 
France. Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Touraine were never 


























464 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


regained by England as fiefs. In adding them to the royal 
domain the king of France became, and for the first time, in¬ 
comparably the greatest feudal noble in the land. 

The Conquest of the South of France by the North 

We may now turn to that fundamental process of the thir¬ 
teenth century without which there would have been no France, 
the conquest of the south of France by the north. In outward 
aspect this too was but an expansion of the royal domain. Fun¬ 
damentally, however, it was much more than that, for the north 
of France through its military conquest imposed its language 
and culture on the south. It should be said at once that the 
civilization of the south was superior to that of the north. We 
have already learned something of the prosperity and of the 
culture of this region. Only in Flanders were textiles more im¬ 
portant; only in Italy were there seaports more thriving; and 
nowhere was there a combination of agriculture, industry, and 
commerce so well proportioned. The immediate consequence 
of the conquest of the south, therefore, was the economic ruin 
of a smiling land and the destruction of its culture. 

We have already learned that the conquest of the south came 
by way of a crusade against heresy, or rather a series of cru¬ 
sades, known as the Albigensian Wars. At the summons of In¬ 
nocent III crusaders descended upon Toulouse from every 
quarter, but especially from the north of France. The first 
crusade against the Albigensians was launched in 1208. Philip 
Augustus took no personal part in it but he allowed his son 
Louis to do so. A Norman noble led the onslaught. He was 
Simon de Montfort, the father of the English statesman of the 
same name. An orgy of destructiveness ensued, lasting for years. 
The crusaders were no better than buccaneers and freebooters 
and they pillaged and destroyed in the name of religion. In¬ 
nocent III was aghast at the fury he had unloosed. 

After Philip IPs death Louis VIII (1223-1226) personally led 
the attack. Carrying the war over the border of Toulouse into 
Provence Louis captured Avignon, though at one time he had 
been nearly forced to raise the siege because of the stench of 
human bodies. It was here that Louis contracted the camp- 


MEDIEVAL FRANCE 


465 


fever that brought him to an early grave after a reign of three 
years. The crusades were continued during the reign of 
Louis IX (1226-1270). Louis’s younger brother, Alphonse of 
Poitou, became count of Toulouse in 1249, and this may be 
taken as the end of the wars. Northern “ carpetbaggers” 
flocked southward following the conquest. Merchants, artisans, 
and even peasants from Normandy, Artois, the Isle-de-France, 
and other northern fiefs replaced in part the dead or exiled 
population of the south. Our own south after the Civil War 
affords an excellent parallel to the conquered south of France, 
in its ruin, its “reconstruction”, and its subsequent recovery. 

In the reign of Philip III (1270-1285) the county of Toulouse 
was added to the royal domain when Alphonse of Poitou died 
without heirs. The county of Champagne also passed to the 
French crown when the count, who was also king of Navarre, 
died (1274) leaving as his heir a girl of three. The child was 
brought up at the court of the French king and betrothed to 
his son, the future Philip IV. Philip Ill’s nickname, le Hardi , 
is a reflection of his reckless expeditions into Spain. He belongs 
with the weak lot of Capetians, but he reaped a harvest which 
others had sown. At his death the geographical expansion of 
the royal power was practically over. The whole central block 
of France, north and south, was now royal domain. The out¬ 
lying provinces of Flanders, Brittany, and Guienne remained 
outlying until the close of the middle ages. Indeed, most of 
Flanders never has been incorporated with France but forms 
the nucleus of the Belgium of our day. One other principality, 
Provence, not previously subject to the French monarchy at all, 
fell to the French crown in the fifteenth century. It had long 
been closely tied to the royal house of France through marriage. 

New Institutions of Government 

We may now turn to the growth of the royal power in France 
as it is revealed in the development of institutions of govern¬ 
ment. New institutions of government were made necessary, in 
the first place, by the great growth of the royal domain. We 
may call these local institutions. The king himself had become 
the immediate overlord of fief after fief. This meant a great in- 


466 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


crease in his administrative work. Feudal dues must be col¬ 
lected, the incidents of feudal tenure such as wardship, escheat, 
marriage rights, forfeitures, and so on administered, and the 
local nobility controlled and regulated. Then, too, as the art 
of government became more modern there were taxes to be col¬ 
lected and justice to be administered throughout the royal 
domain. Successive Capetians appointed officers to see to these 
matters. The most important of these local officials were the 
baillis, as instituted by Philip II. The bailli was a new type of 
officer, being appointed by the king and removable by him. 
He was paid a salary, not invested with a fief. The bailli ex¬ 
ercised all the powers of the crown in his bailiwick,—taxing, 
judging, and commanding in the name of the king. To keep 
them up to the mark, the crown frequently shifted the baillis 
from one district to another. In time these officers became a 
professional class with an esprit de corps of their own. Their 
loyalty to the crown sometimes outran discretion and successive 
kings were under the necessity of restraining the desire of their 
officers to interfere with the local nobility. In the south, when 
the royal domain was extended there, the local officials were 
called senechals but their powers were similar to those of the 
baillis. 

The ever continuing increase of the royal domain brought a 
corresponding increase in the number of baillis. It was essential, 
therefore, that they be properly supervised, to ensure their 
honesty and efficiency. To meet this need Louis IX created the 
enqueteurs. These remind us of the missi dominici of Charle¬ 
magne. They were sent out from the central government to 
check up on the activities of the baillis and senechals. Each 
enqueteur was responsible for a group of bailiwicks. 

Thus far of local institutions. But France consisted not only 
of royal domain, but of great fiefs as well. And the Capetian 
kings were concerned not only with perfecting their govern¬ 
ment of the royal domain but with increasing the royal power 
throughout France. We have learned that each feudal king¬ 
dom had as its central institution, the symbol of its unity, a 
Great Council to which every feudal baron who held of the 
king in chief was bound to come. The barons came, it will be 


MEDIAEVAL FRANCE 


467 


remembered, “to watch the king wear his crown and to give 
him deep speech.” Included in this Great Council or curia regis 
were members of the king’s own immediate family and officials of 
the household. Thus the king would always have a little group 
of “king’s friends” upon whom he could count for support. 

The functions of the feudal Great Council were most diverse. 
There was, of course, little legislation in our sense of the word 
and still less taxation. Probably the most important function 
of the early Great Council was to intervene in the quarrels 
between baron and baron or baron and king. In the early days 
of the Capetian kingship the greater barons frequently ignored 
the summons to the Great Council and flouted its authority. 
Naturally the growth of the royal domain changed that. The 
king’s prestige increased and so did the number of the “king’s 
friends” in the Great Council. The judgments of the Great 
Council were carried out more effectively. We have seen how 
far its decision was enforced in the case of King John of England. 
One of the great objectives of the Capetians in the thirteenth 
century was to compel every feudal noble of France to recognize 
that his own subtenants had the right of appeal to the Great 
Council from the court of their own lord, and over his head if 
need be. Thus would the Great Council become the “Supreme 
Court” for all France. The achievement of this objective came 
in the reign of Louis IX. 

It was established in Louis’s reign that appeal to the Great 
Council must always be allowed when certain issues were in¬ 
volved. Such cases were known as cas royaux. Louis IX offered 
applicants the Roman method of trial as a substitute for the 
clumsy ordeal by battle. Not unnaturally this move was bitterly 
fought by the greater barons. It “involved in reality the total 
destruction of their political independence.” But the time was 
ripe. The common people were sick and tired of the incessant 
private wars of the feudality. Commerce had greatly increased 
by the middle of the thirteenth century and towns were flourish¬ 
ing. Security for life and property was demanded. Public 
opinion, unorganized as yet to be sure, was strongly with the 
king. The supremacy of the curia regis over all France was a 
major achievement in the campaign for law and order. 


468 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


The number of cas royaux increased so rapidly that it became 
necessary to set apart a few members of the Great Council 
whose sole function should be the hearing of these cases. 
This group of “justices” became known as the parlement. 
It was in Louis IX’s reign, too, that a permanent “com¬ 
mittee” of the Great Council was set up to deal with the 
financial business of the curia regis. This was known as 
the chambre des comptes. Thus we see the origin of the 
judiciary and the treasury as institutions of central govern¬ 
ment. 


The Influence of Roman Law 

We may now notice two other factors which greatly increased 
the prestige of the monarch during the course of the thirteenth 
century and so brought the crown greater power for action in 
both local and central government. The first was a revival of 
the study of Roman law. The study of law was an aspect of the 
twelfth century renascence in Italy, as we have seen. With the 
opening of the thirteenth century the study of Roman law was 
taken up in France with great enthusiasm. By the close of the 
century a substantial body of professional lawyers had been 
created. These lawyers sought employment in the administra¬ 
tive system of the royal government. Baillis, senechals , and 
enqueteurs were largely drawn from the lawyer class. More im¬ 
portant still, the justices of the parlement and the members of 
the chambre des comptes were men learned in the law. This 
recruiting of royal officials from the lawyer class was of the 
greatest importance for the growth of the powers of the crown. 
Not that the lawyers introduced Roman methods and Roman 
machinery of government. They did not. But they did bring 
to the machinery of government of France, still very feudal in 
its spirit if not in its form, the spirit of Roman government. 
Roman law was the law of a completely centralized state, the 
law of an absolute monarch. Slowly, through long generations, 
the lawyer-officials of France sought to transform the feudal 
monarchy into a government which, while still thoroughly 
French in its methods and its forms, should be Roman-like in 
its spirit. 


MEDIAEVAL FRANCE 


469 


Louis IX 

A second factor contributing to the authority and prestige 
of monarchy in France in the thirteenth century was the per¬ 
sonality and character of Louis IX. He was a crusader who 
paid for his devotion with his life and a saint who outvied the 
clergy themselves in his attendance upon the means of grace. 
This pious monarch wore a hair shirt next his skin and is said 
never to have laughed on Fridays and to have limited himself 
to beer in Lent. Louis was no pious weakling, however; no good 
man good for nothing. He strongly insisted upon his every 
right as sovereign. While still a feudal and not a modern king, 
Louis felt that the feudality must be strictly regulated. We 
may see this in his attempts to abolish private war and the trial 
by battle. Further, the French king established a European¬ 
wide reputation for justice, in the course of his long reign, be¬ 
coming a sort of one-man “Hague Tribunal”. His contempo¬ 
rary and biographer Joinville wrote, “It was not his excessive 
sanctity which marks him out as unique. Others have been as 
holy, but few have combined so much worldly wisdom with so 
much holiness.” And Voltaire, not given to hero-worship, wrote 
of Louis IX, “It is not given to man to carry virtue to a higher 
point.” In a word, through Louis IX a tradition of royal justice 
was established, a halo of sanctity crowned the royal house of 
France. In the personality of Louis IX the doctrine of divine 
right of kings, later on, was to find its justification. 

Philip the Fair and the Modern State 

The reign of Philip IV, le Bel , closes the thirteenth and begins 
the fourteenth century in French history (1285-1314). In this 
reign we can discern all of the elements of the modern state. 
Philip greatly increased the number of local officials to care for 
the royal domain, which, it will be remembered, had now come 
to include all the central block of France. All officials were 
required to submit regular reports on local conditions. The 
parlement met regularly in Paris during the fall and spring 
months during this reign, and the justices went on circuit 
throughout the country during the summer months. All the 


470 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


justices were now professional lawyers. The Chamber of Ac¬ 
counts continued to deal with government finance, an in¬ 
creasingly important matter. Another group called the conseil 
du roi, a sort of privy council, now displaced the Great Council 
for all ordinary purposes. 

Philip brought to completion another process long under 
way, that of substituting a standing army in the king’s pay 
for the old feudal array. Detachments of soldiers from the towns 
and even groups of peasants were permitted to enlist in the 
king’s army and were paid out of the royal treasury. This was 
a mortal blow to the feudal nobility because it deprived them 
of their excuse for existence as a privileged class. The defense 
of France had now been undertaken by the monarch, with the 
help of all classes of the population. The old obligation of forty 
days of service for the knights was abolished. Nobles were al¬ 
lowed to enlist in the king’s army if they wished to do so, but 
they were paid for their service. The king catered to the 
nobles’ ’sense of social superiority by allowing them to form 
battalions of their own. 

To the national administrative system and the national 
army was now added a national system of taxation. Philip IV’s 
taxes bore on every sort of person and on every class of property. 
The lands of the barons, the lands of the peasants, the towns, 
the gilds, the universities, articles of commerce, both import 
and export,—all were taxed; and the clergy, too, not last nor 
least. Earlier kings of France had called upon the wealth of 
the church, but always with the consent of the church itself. 
Philip IV was strong enough to tax the church without the 
church’s consent. This led to a famous contest between church 
and state which we shall come to in a moment. 

It must be said that some of Philip’s financial measures were 
ill-advised. The king used the Jews as a sponge, allowing them 
to suck money from the people, and then squeezing the money 
out of the Jews. Philip finally banished the Jews, and then 
allowed them to return upon payment of heavy fines. Philip 
also had the bad habit of assigning the collection of certain 
taxes to his creditors, permitting them to collect as much more 
as they could. He even debased the coinage, taking the profits 


MEDIAEVAL FRANCE 


471 


himself and earning the nickname of the “False Coiner.” Thus 
upon the national system of taxation, sound and necessary in 
itself, Philip the Fair fastened an evil tradition of folly and in¬ 
competence in the handling of finances which the French 
monarchy never shook off. 

In his greed for revenue Philip IV found an easy prey in the 
wealthy Templars, the great crusading order which had re¬ 
turned from Syria in 1291. No doubt the order had little of 
social usefulness wherewith to justify its vast wealth, but it 
certainly did not deserve the ruthless treatment meted out to 
it by Philip IV. The king suddenly arrested every Templar in 
France, trumped up charges of immorality and heresy against 
them in order to build up a popular case, and supported his 
charges by confessions extorted by torture. Fifty-six of the 
knights were burned at the stake. All of the vast “movable” 
wealth of the order was kept by the king. Their lands he gave 
to the Hospitallers, but at the price of such heavy fines that the 
rival order found itself poorer than before. 

How completely the French monarchy had made itself one 
with the French nation, by the end of the thirteenth century, is 
revealed in the contest between Philip IV and Pope Boni¬ 
face VIII. France and England were locked in one of their 
recurrent wars over Guienne. Both Edward I and Philip IV, 
in their zeal to raise money for the war, taxed the clergy. The 
clergy of both countries raised cries of anguish to which the 
pope gave a ready ear. In the celebrated bull Clericis Laicos 
(1296) Boniface VIII declared that no layman had any au¬ 
thority whatsoever over the persons or the property of the 
clergy and denounced taxation of clerical property without 
papal consent. The reply of the English king was to outlaw the 
clergy. Philip of France forbade the export of bullion or valu¬ 
ables to Italy, thus cutting off all papal revenue from France. 
Philip’s quarrel with England was composed in 1297 but his 
resentment against the papacy still smouldered. 

He arrested a papal legate and brought him to trial before 
the parlement of Paris on a charge of treason. Thus the whole 
question of the relative power of the new French monarchy and 
the age-old papacy was raised. We are reminded of a similar 


472 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


challenge on the part of the emperor Henry IV more than two 
centuries earlier. The reply of Pope Boniface was the bull 
TJnam Sanctam, the high water mark of the papal claim to 
temporal sovereignty. It affirmed that “submission on the 
part of every one to the bishop of Rome is altogether necessary 
for salvation.” Philip was excommunicated. He appealed to 
the French nation to support the monarchy against the extrava¬ 
gant claims of the papacy, calling together representatives of 
all classes in an Estates General (1302). The higher clergy and 
the nobility were summoned in person. The more important 
towns of France were asked to elect representatives. Meeting 
in their separate chambers at the Louvre the three estates 
listened to twenty-nine articles of indictment against the pope. 
The nobility and the townsmen, strongly, and the French 
clergy, submissively, supported the royal position, which was, 
briefly, that “the king of France acknowledges no sovereignty 
above his own except God.” 

With a vindictiveness quite unnecessary Philip refused to let 
the matter drop even now. His agents entered Italy, allying 
themselves with the Colonna family of Rome, bitter enemies 
of Pope Boniface. The papal stronghold was taken and the pope 
made captive. One of Philip’s hired ruffians struck the pope in 
the face with his mailed fist and the holy father was led away 
to prison seated on a horse with his face to the tail. Thus 
roughly did the modern nation-state announce its advent in 
western civilization. 

A further word about the Estates General which Philip had 
called into being. It will be recognized that here we have to do 
with an institution of great potentiality. Assemblies of this 
sort had been familiar in Aragon and Castile since the middle 
of the twelfth century. Such a body had met in Sicily in 1232, 
in Germany in 1255, and in England in 1265. Thus France was 
actually the last of the major states of Europe to fall into line. 
This is very significant. An assembly which included representa¬ 
tives of all classes had in it the seed of popular government. 
The English Parliament actually developed in this direction. 
In France it was not so. The royal power was too far advanced 
when the first Estates General met. The French Estates General 


MEDIAEVAL FRANCE 


473 


found no depth of earth in which to root itself in independent 
life. It remained a tool of the monarchy, summoned and dis¬ 
missed at the royal will, registering decrees, giving advice, and 
voting taxes when asked to do so. 

For Further Reading 

G. B. Adams, The Growth of the French Nation 
R. Lodge, The Close of the Middle Ages, chap. 3 

F. Funck-Brentano, Medieval France 

G. W. Kitchin, A History of France, vol. I (4th ed.) 

G. Masson, The Story of Medixval France 

A. Tilley, Medixval France 

Cambridge Medixval History, V, chap. 18; VI, chaps. 9 and 10 
J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages, 
chap. 18 

-, Economic and Social History of Europe in the Later Middle 

Ages, chap. 1 

W. H. Hutton, Philip Augustus 

W. Walker, On the Increase of the Royal Power in France under Philip 
Augustus 

F. M. Powicke, The Loss of Normandy 
F. Perry, Saint Louis, the Most Christian King 
J. Hutton, Memoirs of the Sieur de Joinville 
W. F. Knox, The Court of a Saint 



CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT 


MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND: FOUNDING OF THE 
CONSTITUTION 

William the Conqueror’s Sons 

William the Conqueror left three sons, Robert, William 
Rufus, and Henry. To Robert, the oldest, he left Normandy, 
and to William, England. To his youngest son, Henry, the 
Conqueror left a sum of money with the shrewd observation, if 
we may trust tradition, that Henry would ultimately get every¬ 
thing. Robert and Henry represent the two sides of the Norman 
family. Robert is the weak type, handsome, chivalrous, of 
attractive personality, but with no backbone. Government 
falls to pieces under such a ruler, for a public official who seeks 
to be the faithful servant of the public must firmly repulse the 
advances of his “friends”. Later kings of England of the Robert 
type include Stephen, Henry III, and Edward II. William the 
Conqueror’s youngest son, on the other hand, is the strong type 
of the Norman house. He had fine capabilities and great skill 
in managing men. Above all, he had strong self-control. Men 
of this type make splendid administrators. Other kings of the 
Henry type were Henry II and Edward I. 

William Rufus (1088-1100) seems to have had the same fine 
capabilities that his younger brother Henry had, but there was a 
sinister streak in him. He is represented by the historians of the 
period as an utterly wicked and depraved man, but we should 
remember that the history of the times was written by clergy¬ 
men. In a very profane age William Rufus had the reputation 
of being a very profane man. He was seemingly without fear 
and without respect for God or man. He took the feudal ab¬ 
solutism which his father had left him and abused it, making of 
the government an engine of extortion. William Rufus’s prin¬ 
cipal agent was a Norman cleric named Ranulf, called Flambard 

474 


MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND 


475 


or “the torch ”, for he was a consuming fire. We may take 
William’s treatment of the church as a measure of his ruthless¬ 
ness. When a bishopric or abbey fell vacant William reserved 
the right of appointment for himself. Of course this was no 
more than his father had done, but William Rufus’s nominees 
were of a bad type, since he commonly sold church offices to 
the highest bidder. Worse still, the king would not infrequently 
decline to make an appointment at all, simply seizing the lands 
and goods of the vacant see or abbey and collecting the revenues 
himself. Thus multitudes of Christians were deprived of spir¬ 
itual leadership for years at a time. 

When Archbishop Lanfranc died the king seized the lands and 
goods of the see and held them for more than four years, re¬ 
fusing either to make an appointment or to allow any one else 
to do so. Happening to fall desperately ill, the king seems to 
have had a genuine fright and to have felt that the hand of God 
was in it. At any rate, William agreed at last to appoint an 
archbishop and his choice fell on Anselm, abbot of the Norman 
monastery of Bee. Like Lanfranc, Anselm was an Italian. He 
was a man of great devoutness and of equally great scholarship. 
Anselm was not eager to accept the post, likening himself and 
William to “an old and feeble sheep yoked to an untamed 
bull.” The king quickly recovered his usual health and spirits 
and quarreled with the archbishop, refusing to release all 
his lands and demanding a heavy fine. After a brief and vain 
attempt to come to some reasonable solution of the controversy, 
Anselm went into voluntary exile on the Continent for the re¬ 
mainder of the reign. 

In the year 1100, while hunting in the New Forest near 
Winchester with his brother Henry, William was found dead 
with an arrow in his heart. His body was flung on a cart by some 
of his followers and taken to Winchester, where it was buried 
without ceremony. 

William Rufus was dead and Robert was absent on a Crusade, 
but Henry was very much alive and on the spot. He was in the 
prime of life, being about thirty-two years old. He claimed the 
throne of England as one born in England after his father had 
become king. Acting promptly and boldly, Henry seized the 


476 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


royal treasure in Winchester and, enlisting the support of a 
number of bishops and barons, was crowned king of England in 
Westminster Abbey. The new king’s title was a weak one, of 
course, and he proceeded to fortify his position. He issued a 
charter assuring the feudal barons that he would rule 
in accordance with established custom and not tyrannize 
over them as his dead brother had done. As an earnest 
of his sincerity Henry arrested Ranulf Flambard and de¬ 
prived him of his offices. In the same charter he assured 
the clergy that he desired to treat them fairly, and promptly 
sent a messenger to Anselm to invite him back to England. 
Anselm returned, and such was the fairness of Henry and the 
reasonableness of the archbishop that all existing issues be¬ 
tween church and state in England were settled. It will be 
remembered that the terms of the English settlement served a 
little later as the basis for the compromise between empire 
and papacy. 

Nor was Henry unmindful of the common people. He 
promised that he would restore the good laws of Edward the 
Confessor, whose reign was already being looked upon as a 
golden age. Henry then married Edith, a princess of the Anglo- 
Saxon house in direct descent from Ethelred the Unready. This 
must be looked upon as a bid for popular support. Norman 
courtiers found the name of the princess (“Eadgyth”, in Anglo- 
Saxon) unpronounceable, so she was renamed Matilda. With 
the single exception of King Stephen, therefore, every sovereign 
of England from Henry I to the present has been descended 
from both Alfred the Great and William the Conqueror. That 
Henry’s moves had been shrewdly made is revealed in the crisis 
that followed. When his brother Robert, the duke of Nor¬ 
mandy, returned from the wars a few years after Henry’s ac¬ 
cession, claiming the throne of England, and barons on both 
sides of the Channel flocked to Robert’s standard, Henry was 
able to prevail against him (Battle of Tinchebrai, 1106). 
Robert was captured and became a victim of political necessity, 
being kept in prison until his death nineteen years later. King 
Henry became duke of Normandy, and thus he got everything, 
as his father had said. 


MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND 


477 


Constitutional Development under Henry I 

Henry Fs power was not again threatened. Taking over the 
feudal absolutism of his father, Henry proceeded to organize 
it. In doing so he made as important a contribution to English 
institutions as that of any king in English history. Henry’s 
work was in the field of the central government. The feudal 
Great Council was too cumbersome a body to suit Henry, and 
its meetings were too infrequent. He set up a small inner group 
of officials to take over the function of government between the 
meetings of the Great Council and to act as a “steering com¬ 
mittee” when the larger body met. The king’s officials were 
chosen from the lower nobility or from the clerks of the royal 
chapel, who might be men of no family at all. Such men were 
likely to be utterly loyal to Henry since they were wholly de¬ 
pendent upon him. 

The chief of these new ministers, the official who acted as the 
king’s representative in every matter and as the regent during 
his frequent absences from England, was the Justiciar. For this 
office Henry selected a certain Norman named Roger of Caen, 
later bishop of Salisbury. This Roger was of the greatest as¬ 
sistance to Henry, for he had high organizing ability. To take 
charge of the written work of the government, the keeping of 
records, the writing of letters and orders of all sorts, and to see 
that proper use was made of the great seal in authenticating 
documents, Henry created another officer known as the Chan¬ 
cellor. To keep the accounts and to take charge of the treasure 
an officer known as the Treasurer was appointed. There were 
numerous other ministers of less importance. Not only did these 
royal ministers have their individual functions but they also 
met as a body, forming a council whose advice the king de¬ 
pended upon in major as well as in minor matters. In contrast 
with the Great Council, meeting only occasionally, this council 
of royal ministers and members of the household is called the 
Small or Continuous Council. Either council, with the king, 
had full authority in any matter. 

Mediaeval kings of England were peripatetic; that is, they 
were constantly on the move, rarely remaining under one roof 


478 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


for more than a few days. This was largely due to the fact that 
the king was expected to “live of his own” or support himself. 
In those days this meant, in practice, that the king and all his 
court had to travel from one royal manor to another, eating up 
the surplus at one place after another, like a band of nomads. 
This continual shifting of base had its inconvenient side. Take 
a law suit between two knights or barons, for instance, or be¬ 
tween the king and a baron. The parties to the suit might have 
to spend a very considerable time on the road. Any one with a 
financial or administrative problem to solve would find himself 
in the same plight. The inconvenience of perpetual motion, to¬ 
gether with a natural desire to find out on the spot how matters 
stood, led Henry to detach members of his Small Council 
and send them on circuit through the counties of England. 
Toward the end of his reign regular circuits were worked out, 
over which these “justices” traveled two by two. Through this 
system of itinerant justices, the modern circuit courts, the royal 
authority was given visible and tangible form in every part of 
England, and that, too, regularly, and not merely when the 
king was eating his way through his manors or dashing hither 
and thitlier on punitive expeditions. 

Feudal Anarchy under Stephen 

Henry died, after a reign of thirty-five years, of “a surfeit of 
eels”, leaving the succession in doubt. His only son, William, 
his pride and joy, was drowned when the boat in which he and 
a number of friends were joy-riding went on the rocks. Henry 
also had a daughter, Matilda, widow of the emperor Henry V 
but remarried to the ambitious French baron Geoffrey, count of 
Anjou. After the death of his son the old Henry had doggedly 
set himself to the task of securing the recognition of Matilda 
as his heir, although neither Normandy nor England had ever 
been ruled by a woman. At Henry’s death, however, his ar¬ 
rangements were calmly ignored by the English and Norman 
barons, and Stephen of Blois, son of William the Conqueror’s 
daughter Adela and the count of Blois, claimed the throne. 

King Stephen belonged to the weak side of the Norman house. 
He took everybody’s advice and tried to be everybody’s friend. 


MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND 


479 


As regards Henry Fs new officials and new institutions, Stephen 
apparently did not know what it was all about. The new of¬ 
ficials were ousted and their places remained unfilled. The 
barons of England and Normandy needed no further prompting. 
They began to carry on as they pleased, lording it over the 
countryside, erecting strongholds, even coining money. The 
feudal disintegration of England was made complete when 
Matilda landed with a following of Angevin and Norman 
knights. There ensued nine years of civil war. Peasantry and 
townsfolk suffered grievously at the hands of the feudal barons. 
A chronicler wrote of them, “ Never did heathen men do worse 
than they did. Men said openly that Christ and his saints 
slept.” But everything is relative. The reign of Stephen was 
not an evil one according to continental standards. It was just 
an average sample of what was going on regularly across the 
Channel in feudal France. Nor was Stephen’s reign worse than 
the later decades of Anglo-Saxon history had been. 

Henry II and the Angevin Empire 

England was destined soon to rally from her feudal sinking 
spell. A son had been born to Matilda and Geoffrey in 1133, 
two years before the death of Henry I. He was named Henry 
also. By 1150 Count Geoffrey had won Normandy from Stephen 
and in that year he gave it to the young Henry. Thus launched 
in life, fortune and his own courage and resourcefulness made 
Henry Plantagenet by his twenty-first year the greatest po¬ 
litical figure in Europe. Duke of Normandy in 1150, he ob¬ 
tained Anjou, Touraine, and Maine on the death of his father 
in 1151. In 1152 he married Eleanor of Aquitaine, thus obtain¬ 
ing the southeast quarter of France. In 1153 he landed in 
England and compelled Stephen to sign a treaty recognizing 
Henry as his heir; and in the following year, on Stephen’s death, 
Henry became king of England. Claiming the overlordship of 
Wales and Scotland, and later becoming lord of Ireland, Henry 
ruled over provinces so extensive and so varied as almost to 
justify the appellation “empire” which is sometimes applied to 
his dominions. 

With Henry’s empire we are not concerned here. That it 


480 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


concerned Henry, however, is evident from the fact that 
in a reign of thirty-five years he spent but thirteen years in 
England, mostly in short visits varying from a few months 
to a year or two in length. Even so, the contribution of 
Henry II to the growth of English institutions is at least as 
great as that of any English king. It is evident that only a man 
of unusual vitality could have given so much strength of mind 
and body to so many projects. The young king was a heavily 
built man with thick arms and legs, heavy shoulders, and a 
thick neck. He had a very florid face and red hair, which he 
kept closely clipped. Henry was a man of ceaseless activity. 
He could not sit still even in church but busied himself drawing 
pictures. He had a harsh voice and a short temper, which he is 
said to have displayed upon occasion by foaming at the mouth. 

Henry II came to be a European figure through personal rela¬ 
tionships set up by marriage. A son was married to the countess 
of Brittany, and a daughter to Alphonse VIII of Castile. 
Another daughter was married to Henry the Lion, the powerful 
duke of Saxony, and a third to William the Good, ruler of the 
Norman kingdom of southern Italy and Sicily. Henry himself 
was offered the crown of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in 
1185, and, after the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, he took the Cross 
and made active preparations for a Crusade, but his plans were 
cut short by death. 

Henry II Reorganizes the Judicial System 

The first task confronting Henry II in England, after his 
accession, was that of restoring the order and security that had 
been enjoyed in the reign of his grandfather. In Stephen's 
reign, as we have seen, there had been a mushroom growth of 
castles all over England. There were no fewer than 375 of these 
symbols and citadels of feudal authority. These “adulterine" 
castles, as they were called, Henry straightway seized, razing 
some to the ground and placing royal garrisons in the others. 
A few barons combined to resist the king, but they were easily 
defeated. 

Henry next proceeded to set up again the machinery of gov¬ 
ernment which his grandfather had created. Henry I’s old 












































































































































482 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Treasurer was still living, and was again installed in office. An¬ 
other very able official was appointed Justiciar. For his Chan¬ 
cellor Henry selected a brilliant young churchman named 
Thomas a Becket. Henry and Becket, both young men, became 
boon companions at work and play. The system of itinerant 
justices was reinaugurated and made even more regular. The 
English counties were grouped into five circuits and three 
justices were assigned to each circuit. Thus was the royal 
authority again made regularly visible in every part of England 
as in the days of Henry I. 

With restless and resistless energy Henry II now proceeded 
to develop and elaborate his grandfather’s machinery of gov¬ 
ernment. Stephen’s reign had been a time when murder, rob¬ 
bery, and other crimes of violence had been numerous. There 
had been no one whose business it was to keep the lawless ele¬ 
ments of society under restraint. Each feudal baron main¬ 
tained his own system of courts and even had his own private 
gallows, stocks, ducking stools, and other paraphernalia of 
rough justice. But it was easy to escape from the jurisdiction 
of one baron into that of another. Furthermore, many of the 
barons were themselves lawless men. What was needed was a 
single central authority, vigilant and unrelenting, whose long 
arm could reach into every corner of England. Thus only could 
crime be punished and humble folk made to dwell in security. 

Accordingly Henry II instructed his itinerant justices when 
they came into a county to order the sheriff to select and put 
on oath twelve men from each hundred, and four from each 
township within the hundred. To each such group, called from 
their oaths the “jury”, the justices put the question, “What 
crimes have been committed in your neighborhood since we 
were here last and whom do you suspect? ’ ’ The answer of the 
jury was called a verdict (veredidum ). This jury became known, 
from its large size, as the “grand jury”. Persons under sus¬ 
picion, when taken, were sent to the ordeal of water. If they 
failed in the ordeal they were to be punished, usually by hang¬ 
ing, for jails were few. If the suspected person succeeded in the 
ordeal, he might still be outlawed if he were “of very bad repu¬ 
tation and publicly and disgracefully spoken ill of by the testi- 


MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND 


483 


mony of many and lawful men”, in the language of Henry IPs 
instructions. 

Thus did the king attempt to make all serious crimes the ex¬ 
clusive concern of the royal courts. By that very act he suc¬ 
ceeded to a large degree in emptying the feudal courts of their 
content and reducing their jurisdiction to petty offenses against 
law and order. In the next reign, if we may look ahead for a 
moment, it was ordered that the juries of presentment, or grand 
juries, should be selected by four knights of each county and not 
by the sheriff, and further, that these four knights should be 
elected by the members of the county court itself. In this man¬ 
ner was the principle of election introduced into England. 

So far of criminal justice. But Henry was determined to 
supply his system of courts with a larger number of civil suits. 
A principal, and perhaps the principal, motive of the king in 
this was the financial return from fees and fines. At the king’s 
command his justices offered their services to every English¬ 
man of the rank of freeholder or above, whether or not he were 
an immediate tenant of the king. In accordance with Henry’s 
instructions, therefore, the royal justices now issued writs to 
any freeholder willing to pay for them. These writs would take 
the freeholder’s law suit out of the court of his own overlord 
and remove it to the king’s courts. Cases began to pour into 
the king’s courts in great numbers, in spite of the fact that the 
fees charged for the writs were very high. 

Why this popularity of the king’s courts? The answer to this 
question reveals another of Henry’s epoch-making innovations, 
for he offered to all litigants the latest and most scientific pro¬ 
cedure. Most law suits are over property and in those days 
most property was in land. In the feudal courts the decision 
as to who had the better title to a piece of land was by ordeal, 
usually the ordeal of battle. This had degenerated into a duel 
between hired champions, which gave far too much place to 
chance and fraud. The litigant with a good case was therefore 
attracted by the proffer of a new method of trial, now available 
in the king’s courts. According to the new method, a group of 
twelve of the more lawful and better men of the neighborhood 
who knew the facts in the case were put upon their oath to say 


484 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


which litigant had the better right. In this “petty” jury we 
have the trial jury of to-day. Later on three or four afforcing 
jurors with special knowledge were added. Gradually a com¬ 
plete distinction emerged between the afforcing jurors who 
knew the facts, that is, the witnesses, and the other members 
of the jury, who were distinguished by their lack of knowledge 
of the facts. It may be added that as the ordeal passed out of 
use in criminal cases the petty or trial jury was brought into 
use there also. 


The Common Law 

Founder of the jury system, Henry was also the founder of 
the common law, that is, a law common to all England, emanat¬ 
ing from a single central source. England was the first country 
of Europe to secure such a law. The king’s justices, whether at 
home or on circuit, kept a record of their decisions. Many of 
the justices were men of keen intelligence and good legal train¬ 
ing. They felt, naturally, that the law should be the same for 
all, and they endeavored to decide similar cases in accordance 
with the same legal principle. As the justices went from county 
to county they encountered local customs of great variety— 
customs of the people, descended from Anglo-Saxon times and 
slowly changing from generation to generation. In establishing 
legal principles the justices drew largely from the various local 
customs, creating a sort of greatest common denominator. 
Thus there arose in the course of time a law common to all 
England. Common law, then, is common usage. As century 
has succeeded century and the customs of the people have 
changed so has the common law. Judges are still riding their 
circuits and drawing from popular usage new legal principles. 
Thus the common law may be defined as “that which men have 
found to be convenient, expedient, adapted to the circumstances 
of the actual world.” 

Changes in the Military System 

Thus did Henry II try to empty the feudal courts of their 
content in civil as well as in criminal cases. His attempt to 
eliminate feudalism from the realm of government may be il- 


MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND 


485 


lustrated in yet another way. Henry tried to get rid of the 
feudal barons as a fighting force. The value of the military 
service owed the king by his tenants-in-chief was never very 
great. The whole number of knights whom the king could sum¬ 
mon was not over 5000; their service could not exceed forty 
days in a year, and the knights always objected to serving far 
from home. Henry’s “far flung empire”, constantly in danger 
from enemies within and without, made a more effective military 
system essential. His new military system consisted, first, in 
the commuting of the military service owed by his tenants-in- 
chief into a money payment. This commutation, called scutage, 
was optional, but its convenience appealed to the knights as well 
as to the king. With the revenue drawn from this and from 
other sources the king proceeded to hire knights in the open 
market. These professional fighting men would go anywhere 
and fight anybody at any time. 

For the better security of England itself Henry ordered that 
every man in England of the rank of freeholder and above, 
whether a tenant-in-chief of the king or not, should provide 
himself with arms suitable to his means and social position. 
The knight should maintain himself and a horse in full armor; 
the squire should have armor without a horse; the freeholder 
and burgess should have coat of mail, steel cap, and spear. 
Further, these arms were to be used only when their owners 
were called into the national service by the king. In this famous 
“Assize of Arms” (1181) we may see, if we please, the revival 
of the old Anglo-Saxon fyrd; and we certainly must see in it 
the principle of the modern national army replacing the old 
feudal array. 

The Royal Authority and the Church 

It was inevitable that Henry II should attempt to extend the 
control of the central government not only over the feudal 
nobility but also over that other and even more powerful in¬ 
stitution of mediaeval society, the church. The clergy in Eng¬ 
land were now very numerous. There had been a great revival 
of monasteries in the twelfth century. One hundred and fifteen 
new monasteries were built in the reign of Stephen, and one 


486 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


hundred and thirteen in the reign of Henry II. They were 
chiefly of the Cistercian order and they did a splendid work in 
agricultural pioneering in various parts of England. Further¬ 
more, the church had established itself much more firmly as a 
separate order. During Stephen’s reign the ordinary courts of 
law had almost ceased to function. The church courts, however, 
had greatly increased and extended their authority, for they 
were practically the only recourse during that period for those 
who had wrongs to redress. We have already seen something 
of the extent of the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts over the 
persons and property of clergy and laity. It will be recalled, 
further, that a great development in canon law had taken place 
during the twelfth century, the Gratian Code having been 
drawn up just as Henry II was coming to the throne. As the 
number and variety of ecclesiastical cases increased in England 
so also did appeals to Rome. The church was thus busily setting 
itself up in England as a state within a state. 

To Henry, as to every other ruler of his time, a contest for 
power was a contest for jurisdiction; hence it was inevitable 
that he should attempt to extend the authority of the royal 
courts over the church courts. It is a clear proof of his hard 
sense that Henry did not attempt to empty the church courts 
of any of their content, as he had done in the case of the barons’ 
courts. He merely attempted to regulate and control the church 
courts. For example, the king felt that the penalties of the 
ecclesiastical courts were not sufficiently severe to check crime 
even among the clergy themselves. He was told by his justices 
early in his reign that over one hundred murders had been com¬ 
mitted by clergymen since his accession. Henry was content 
that a clergyman accused of a crime should be tried in the ec¬ 
clesiastical court and, if convicted, degraded, that is, made a 
layman. But having committed one crime as a priest the 
criminal was now free to commit another as a layman, and 
this outraged Henry’s sense of justice. He ordered that a de¬ 
graded priest should be handed over to the king’s courts for 
punishment in accordance with the law of the land. He also 
declared that in all cases of disputes between clergy and laymen 
the question whether the ecclesiastical courts or the king’s 


MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND 


487 


courts should have jurisdiction should be decided by the king’s 
justices. The bishops present at the Great Council where these 
decisions were announced (the Council of Clarendon, 1164) 
made emphatic and even violent protest. They pointed out 
that laymen were made to sit in judgment upon clergy, and that 
a man might be punished twice for the same offense. 

Thomas a Becket 

Much of the emphasis and most of the violence of the epis¬ 
copal opposition was due to the new archbishop of Canterbury, 
who was none other than the brilliant and worldly young clergy¬ 
man whom Henry had made Chancellor early in his reign. 
Thomas a Becket had made an admirable Chancellor. Able ad¬ 
ministrator, he was also fond of life; his magnificent style of 
living reminds us of the later Wolsey. There seemed to be 
little of the clergyman about Thomas; indeed, he had never 
gone beyond minor orders. It was natural that when Henry 
turned to the regulation and control of the church he should 
think of his friend Thomas as just the man for his purpose. 
Accordingly, when the old archbishop died in 1162 Henry ap¬ 
pointed Thomas in his stead. 

The king’s surprise at Thomas’s evident reluctance to accept 
the office turned into amazement and chagrin when, a little 
later, the new archbishop resigned his office of Chancellor. 
Thomas foresaw the coming conflict between church and state 
in England more clearly than Henry himself, and he wished to 
have his hands free. Furthermore, he seems to have been one 
of those men who throw themselves completely and with entire 
abandon into whatever enterprise they enter upon. Thomas 
had a single-track mind. His former way of living he gave up 
completely, and devotion to the self-imposed task of defending 
the rights of the church was matched by the pious austerities 
of his life. It is said that at his death the archbishop’s devoted 
followers found a hair shirt next his skin and his body covered 
with vermin. 

It is evident that a contest between two such men as Henry 
and Thomas would be bitter and that it would be a fight to the 
finish. We need not follow the story in detail. Thomas proved 


488 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


to be more uncompromising than the pope himself in his de¬ 
fense of the rights of his order. In a wild outburst of anger at a 
fresh piece of insubordination and effrontery on the part of 
Thomas, the king let fall some expressions that were interpreted 
by some of his followers as a wish for Thomas’s death, although 
it is clear that Henry had no such intent, but was merely re¬ 
lieving his feelings. There followed a crime which shocked 
Europe. Four knights in the king’s service sought out the arch¬ 
bishop in his cathedral at Canterbury and hacked and stabbed 
him to death. 

Thomas proved more powerful in death than in life. Henry 
hastened to perform the most abject penance for the crime 
which public opinion laid at his door. Journeying to Canter¬ 
bury, the king entered the city barefoot and in the garb of a 
penitent and prostrated himself at the tomb of the martyr. 
Making his way to the chapter house the king bared his shoul¬ 
ders and invited every one present to strike him three times 
with the knotted cord used in monastic discipline. Having eaten 
nothing that day, Henry spent the entire night in fasting and 
prayer at Becket’s tomb. Thus did this powerful sovereign at¬ 
tempt to placate public opinion and assuage his own personal 
sense of guilt. 

Canonized a few years after his death, St. Thomas became 
the favorite English saint and his shrine the most famous 
pilgrim center of England. The common people came to be¬ 
lieve that Thomas was the champion of popular liberty. This 
is utterly untrue. And yet the cause for which he fought was a 
great one. It was a rough age, and the church had much work 
to do. To have handed the church over to the control of the 
state would have fatally handicapped the church in its work of 
civilization. Thomas vindicated the prestige of the church in 
England, and it remained powerful and relatively independent 
even though most of Henry’s judicial regulations remained in 
force. 

Henry’s domestic life was not happy. To keep his barons in 
order was job enough for any eleventh century king; but Henry 
found his task doubly difficult because of the help given his 
rebellious subjects by his wife and one or more of his four boys 


MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND 


489 


as they came to manhood. John, the youngest, was his favorite, 
and the story goes that when, late in his reign, the old king 
learned that his youngest son was involved in the latest con¬ 
spiracy, he turned his face to the wall and died (1188). 

Richard I, the Absentee King 

Two of Henry’s sons had preceded him in death, leaving 
Richard and John, who succeeded in turn. Both Richard and 
John were thoroughly bad kings and quite exceptional in 
English history. Richard (1188-1199) did not care for the job. 
He had been the governor of Gascony, in his father’s name, 
since he was sixteen years old, and had grown up in the south 
of France as a typical knight and troubadour. The capture of 
Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187 and the launching of the Third 
Crusade gave Richard the opportunity of his life. He spent 
some months in England, after his accession, in feverish prepara¬ 
tions for his Crusade, his chief concern being to turn everything 
into cash. He left England in 1189 and was gone for five years. 
Returning in 1194, Richard spent a few months preparing for 
his war with Philip Augustus over Normandy, and then left 
England never to return. In 1199 he was killed while besieging 
a castle held by a rebel baron. 

In a reign of eleven years Richard was in England less than 
one year. Yet the government functioned perfectly in his ab¬ 
sence, and what is even more remarkable, perhaps, in his pres¬ 
ence. Even the extraordinarily heavy scutages, feudal dues, 
and other taxes made necessary by Richard’s Crusade and 
ransom, as well as by the wars in France, were raised without 
difficulty. That the reign of Richard was no feudal interlude 
like that of Stephen is a remarkable tribute to the solidity of 
Henry II’s institutions and to the character of the men whom 
Henry had selected for office. 

King John and the Barons 

Richard left no son and so the succession fell to his younger 
brother John (1199-1216), who succeeded to the whole of the 
Angevin “empire”. Of the three great features of the reign of 
John, two have been anticipated. His loss of Normandy helped 


490 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


to make England English and was an event to be welcomed. 
Not that Englishmen of that day welcomed it, however, for the 
struggle for the recovery of Normandy went on fitfully for half 
a century. John’s struggle with the papacy has been studied in 
connection with the age of Innocent III. In holding out for so 
long against the greatest weapons of the greatest of mediaeval 
popes John gave added proof of the solid power of the English 
monarchy. The third great feature of John’s reign was the revolt 
of the barons and the signing of the Great Charter, the most 
important constitutional document in the history of England 
and one of the most important in the history of the world. 

The strong government built up by Henry II had been none 
too welcome to the barons. John took over this government 
and used its authority outrageously. He extorted feudal dues 
in excessive amounts. He levied frequent scutages and de¬ 
manded personal service as well. He insulted the barons by 
summoning them for personal service and then keeping them 
waiting around while he carried on his campaigns with mer¬ 
cenaries. He demanded hostages of his barons as a pledge of 
their good conduct, when as their overlord he was bound to be 
their protector. He abused the right of marriage by compelling 
heiresses to marry upstart adventurers below their rank. He 
terrified everyone by his treachery and cruelty. He seized the 
wife and son of one of his barons against whom he had a grudge 
and starved them to death. More than twenty of the prisoners 
taken by John when he captured Prince Arthur were left to 
die of starvation in jail. An English historian has recently 
written, “John was perhaps alone among our kings of an un¬ 
mistakably criminal type.” The good bishop Stubbs says more 
mildly, “His character suffered from the lack of good home in¬ 
fluence in childhood.” In their fear and hatred of John the 
lay barons were joined by the clergy; long years of spoliation 
and outrage during the struggle over the archbishopric had 
alienated the English church. 

It must be remembered that no mediaeval king, not even 
Henry II, could stand against a really united baronage. With 
England simmering with revolt John staked everything on a 
last effort to recover Normandy and thus rehabilitate his 


MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND 


491 


prestige. The defeat at Bouvines in 1214 was a fatal blow, and 
John returned to England a beaten man. The English barons, 
led by the archbishop, proceeded to draw up a long list of 
crimes and misdemeanors, like a grand jury indictment. They 
then took up arms and ran the king to earth at Runnymede. 

The Great Charter 

Magna Charta was not born great but has had greatness 
thrust upon it. Born of a revolt of the feudal barons of a kind 
familiar enough in England and all too familiar on the Conti¬ 
nent, it was the product of a feudal reaction against feudal 
absolutism. The English barons struck at the machinery of 
absolutism and attempted to destroy it. They asserted the 
authority of the feudal courts as against the king’s courts, of 
the feudal army as against the national army, of the feudal 
Great Council as against the small council. The English church 
also seized the opportunity of asserting its ancient liberties and 
of freeing itself from the state. Magna Charta therefore was 
reactionary. But this is not its most important meaning. The 
destructive work of the barons did not go very far; most of 
Henry IFs judicial machinery was left, for example. Further¬ 
more, Magna Charta in its deeper meaning was progressive. 
It said in clause after clause, “ There is law in England, law so 
fundamental in its character that no one, not even the king 
himself, may disobey it.” To be sure, the special laws cited 
were mostly feudal custom, but the principle remains the same. 
Magna Charta declared, further, that if the king should disobey 
the law it is the right of the nation to exact obedience. The 
barons set up committees to watch for breaches of the law and 
to levy war on the king if need be. This principle of a funda¬ 
mental law which the nation has the right to enforce even as 
against its own executive is the basis upon which every free 
government in the world rests to-day. 

Magna Charta is progressive, too, because it has been pro¬ 
gressively interpreted, or perhaps it would be truer to say 
progressively misinterpreted. Appealed to in each crisis of 
English liberty for centuries, successive generations of English¬ 
men have found in the clauses of Magna Charta the very liber- 


492 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


ties for which they were fighting at the moment. Thus in a 
clause which sought to destroy the jury system and to revert 
to the ordeal, seventeenth century patriots found an explicit 
guarantee of trial by jury. They saw “looming through the 
mists of time the gigantic figure of Magna Charta as the goddess 
of English freedom.” 1 

King John “signed” the Charter, thereby winning his re¬ 
lease, and then went right on fighting. His overlord, Pope In¬ 
nocent III, released him from the oath of Runnymede and John 
so far got the upper hand that the barons called in Louis of 
France, son and heir of Philip II, to be their king. But the 
long train of events which Louis’s intervention might have 
started was cut short by John’s sudden death (1216), said to 
have been caused by a too hearty indulgence in peaches and ale. 

The death of King John completely altered the political 
situation, for his son Henry was a boy of nine, and the English 
barons who had callbd in Louis withdrew their support from 
him, for they were now masters of the situation. The Great 
Council designated one of the barons as regent, and the Charter 
was reissued. England settled down to a few years of quiet, 
during which the Great Council met frequently and supervised 
the administration of the government in the name of the young 
king. 

The Troubled Reign of Henry III 

The reign of Henry III (1216-1272) was one of the longest 
in English history. This was the more remarkable in an age 
when the normal expectation of life was less than half what it 
is now. Henry’s reign was also one of the most troubled in 
English history—a period of almost continual constitutional 
struggle. Out of it, however, a result of the greatest importance 
emerged. Magna Charta might easily have been put aside by a 
series of strong kings. In France, in Aragon, in Hungary, similar 
documents of the same period amounted to nothing; but during 
the long and troubled reign of Henry III the Great Charter of 
England became what it has since remained, a rallying cry for 
the forces of constitutional liberty. 

1 Trevelyan, History of England , p. 172. 


MEDIEVAL ENGLAND 


493 


A large part of the trouble in the reign of Henry III was 
Henry himself. He represents the weak side of the Norman 
family. He was a good man of blameless private life, with con¬ 
siderable taste in art; England, and indeed the world, is in his 
debt as the rebuilder of Westminster Abbey in the Early English 
style. But in intelligence and in will power Henry was below 
average capacity. He had no military or executive ability what¬ 
ever. Indeed, he had no taste for the life of strenuous and in¬ 
cessant activity which the job of being king required in those 
days. Men had no respect for Henry III. The earl of Norfolk 
called him a liar to his face, a thing that has happened to no 
other English king. 


Foreign Favorites 

There were two main sources of difficulty. One was foreign 
favorites. Like Robert of Normandy and King Stephen, 
Henry III could not resist his friends, and it was his misfortune 
that most of his friends were regarded by the English barons 
as “foreigners”. There were three sets of foreign favorites. 
First, there was a group of hangers-on left over from John’s 
reign. These were chiefly Normans whom the conquest of 
Normandy by Philip II had left high and dry. Chief among 
them was Peter des Roches, whom Henry made bishop of Win¬ 
chester. A second set were the Provencals, or Henry’s wife’s 
poor relations. In 1236 Henry married Eleanor of Provence. 
Three of Eleanor’s uncles came to England as soon as they 
learned what an easy mark the king was. One became bishop 
of Winchester in succession to Peter des Roches; another be¬ 
came archbishop of Canterbury; a third was made earl of Rich¬ 
mond. One of the queen’s sisters meanwhile married the king’s 
own brother. A third set of foreign favorites was from Poitou. 
Henry’s mother, widow of King John, had returned to the 
south of France and married her former lover, Guy, whom John 
had defrauded. She proceeded to raise up a new family of chil¬ 
dren, who came to England and fastened themselves upon their 
half-brother, the king. Two of them were invested with Eng¬ 
lish baronies and one acquired an English bishopric. The 
barons of England were deeply offended that the king should 


494 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


continue to pass out his favors to successive batches of for¬ 
eigners. “England is like a vineyard with a broken hedge. All 
steal the grapes,” was the succinct summary of a native English 
baron. Indeed, the reign of Henry III marks the first definite 
appearance in England of national sentiment. 

Papal Exactions 

A second source of difficulty was the papal connection, for 
England was still a fief of the papacy. The first half of the 
century brought a series of strong popes. There was an almost 
continuous struggle between the papacy and the emperor 
Frederick II. Successive popes had great need of money, and 
all Europe was drawn upon. England was particularly subject 
to papal demands, which Henry III was unable or unwilling to 
resist. These demands were of two sorts. First, it was required 
that officials of the papal court be given English benefices. In 
1242, for example, Pope Gregory IX demanded that 390 Italian 
clergy be given English livings before any Englishman should 
be appointed. It is estimated that the income of alien clergy 
in England, during this period, was three times that of the king. 
Secondly, there was the heavy taxation of English clergy and 
laity. In 1229 one-tenth of the property of the clergy was de¬ 
manded by the pope, and in 1240 twenty per cent. The climax 
came in 1257 when Henry III, at the request of the pope, ac¬ 
cepted the crown of Sicily for his second son, Edmund. This 
meant that England must finance the war which the pope pro¬ 
posed to wage against the last of the Hohenstaufens. Henry 
brought the young prince before the Great Council dressed in 
Sicilian costume, but the barons flatly refused to agree to the 
taxation which the king requested. 

Simon de Montfort, Leader of the Constitutional 
Opposition 

The leader of the barons in this refusal was Simon de Mont¬ 
fort, one of the greatest figures in English history. Paradoxically 
enough, Simon had begun his career in England as one of the 
foreign favorites. He was the fourth son of that Simon de 
Montfort who had led the Albigensian Crusade, and the young 


MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND 


495 


Simon emigrated to England to claim an estate which he had 
inherited from his grandmother. He won the hand of Henry Ill’s 
sister, and was appointed governor of Gascony, one of the big 
“political plums” of the day. He ruled Gascony with an iron 
hand, but was dismissed from his post by Henry III for no good 
or sufficient reason. Simon returned to England, joined the 
party of opposition to the king, and came quickly to the leader¬ 
ship of the English barons, despite the handicap of foreign 
birth. As leader of the reform party Simon made a series of 
demands upon the king at the Great Council of 1258, which 
met at Oxford. 

These demands, which are known as the “ Provisions of Ox¬ 
ford,” provided that the Great Charter be reissued and strictly 
observed, that foreign favorites be dismissed and driven out 
of the country, that papal taxation be resisted, and finally that 
a permanent committee of the Great Council be appointed to 
take over the government of the kingdom, controlling all the 
acts of the king and appointing his ministers. The king naturally 
resisted and a brief civil war ensued. Simon proved as able in 
arms as in council. Supported by a majority of barons, he de¬ 
feated and captured the king. During the year that followed 
Simon was the ruler of England. And he made history, for in 
that year, 1265, he summoned to his support a “parliament” 
which included two knights from each shire and two burgesses 
from the more important towns, as well as commoners, bishops, 
abbots, and barons. Simon, then, was something more than 
the average feudal baron of his day. He was a leader, premature 
to be sure, of democracy. It is noteworthy that among his fol¬ 
lowers were to be found the citizens of London, the students of 
Oxford, and a large number of the knights and freeholders of 
the country. 

The regime of Earl Simon was cut short by defeat and 
death. Among his earlier followers and disciples had been 
young Edward, the king’s oldest son. Convinced finally that 
the continuance of Simon’s rule would mean the end of mon¬ 
archy, Edward left Simon’s camp and placed himself at the 
head of the royalist party. Employing tactics he had learned 
from Simon himself he won a complete victory in the battle of 


496 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Evesham (1265), where the doughty earl was defeated and 
slain. During the remaining years of Henry’s reign Prince 
Edward was the real ruler of England. The government did 
not slip back into the old groove. The Charter was again con¬ 
firmed. Most of the reforms of the Provisions of Oxford were 
carried into effect. So quickly and thoroughly did the young 
prince do his work that he was able to leave England on a 
Crusade in 1270. He was away from England for four years, 
returning in leisurely fashion two years after his father’s death. 

Edward I and the Model Parliament 

In Edward I England had gotten, at last, a king who was in¬ 
tensely English and who was resolved to make England the 
center of his interests, a fact which is suggested by his English 
name. Moreover, Edward had learned a lesson from the dis¬ 
orders of his father’s reign. He was “a man whom revolutions 
teach.” Edward resolved to rule England according to the law 
of the land and in consultation with all classes. One of his first 
acts was to reissue the Great Charter, as a pledge of good gov¬ 
ernment. 

But his most important act, if we may judge by its later con¬ 
sequences, was to extend representation in Parliament to all 
classes of the nation, thus confirming the work of Simon de 
Montfort. “That which affects all should be approved by all,” 
said Edward in one of his proclamations. Who were “all”, in 
Edward’s mind? English society was still feudal in character, 
even though feudalism was already vanishing from the political 
and economic spheres. The Model Parliament of 1295 brought 
together the three feudal estates, sitting in four houses. Mem¬ 
bers of the old Great Council, bishops, abbots, and barons, 
came as usual. A second house was made up of representatives 
selected by the lower clergy; a third, of representatives from the 
towns; and a fourth, of representatives of the shires. The 
second house took to meeting separately and so dropped out of 
Parliament. The representatives of the towns and shires came 
to sit together, and were called collectively the Commons. The 
old Great Council became known, therefore, as the Lords. 

The Model Parliament of Edward I, so like the Estates 


MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND 


497 


General of France of a few years later, was, in the beginning, as 
completely subject to the control of the king. Edward’s reign 
was a period of great activity in legislation, but it is significant 
of Parliament’s small beginnings that the statutes of Edward’s 
reign were not Parliament’s work. Strange as it may seem to 
us, Parliament was not then thought of as a legislature. Its 
principal function was to vote taxes. Like Magna Charta, then, 
Parliament was great not for what it was but for what it was 
to become. Beginning as a tool of the king, Parliament’s con¬ 
trol over national policy has grown enormously and is now 
complete. Its representative basis has changed through the 
centuries as English society has changed. 

Edward I and the British Isles 

Edward’s reign was an important period in the history of the 
British Isles. The king’s objective was the political unification 
of the islands, a thing which the Romans had found impossible. 
The moment was favorable, for England was not so much en¬ 
tangled with France as she had been when she had held Nor¬ 
mandy or as she was later to become during the Hundred Years’ 
War. Wales had been England’s frontier for generations. In a 
campaign extending through seven years Edward I extended 
his authority throughout the principality. Castles were built 
to keep the Welsh quiet, the land was divided into shires, and 
itinerant justices brought in the common law of England. To 
“please the Welsh” King Edward gave them a prince “who 
could not speak a word of English”; his infant son, born at 
Carnarvon, became the first Prince of Wales. 

If Wales was England’s frontier, Ireland was a farther frontier, 
England’s “Far West.” Anglo-Norman barons from the Welsh 
border had begun to migrate to Ireland in Henry II’s reign, 
intermarrying with the native Irish and carving out fiefs for 
themselves. Successive kings of England sought to establish 
and maintain a semblance of control over these barons, and 
over Ireland generally, and a local center of English authority 
was established at Dublin with an English governor or viceroy 
in charge. Edward I’s governors were energetic and able and 
the time seemed ripe for a conquest of Ireland as complete as 


498 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


that of Wales, when Edward’s attention was diverted by his 
troubles with Scotland. Unhappy Ireland remained for cen¬ 
turies a half-conquered country. 

Half Celtic and half Saxon, Scotland had emerged as a 
political unit separate from Ireland and from England after the 
Danish invasions. Small, poor, and sparsely inhabited, the 
northern kingdom lay open to cultural influences from her 
southern neighbor. The Norman kings of England frequently 
asserted a claim to the political overlordship of Scotland but 
this claim was never acknowledged by the Scottish kings. In 
the reign of Edward I a fresh opportunity arose for the assertion 
of the traditional English claim when Edward was asked by the 
Scotch barons to settle a succession dispute. Edward’s claim 
to overlordship was acknowledged. It soon appeared that 
Edward did not intend to allow his overlordship to remain a 
matter of form, however, and when the Scotch discovered this 
Edward had a revolt on his hands. In this revolt peasants, 
citizens, and barons joined, and Scotland’s war for independ¬ 
ence, of which the commoner Wallace and the baron Bruce 
were equally the heroes, marks the first appearance in Europe 
of the phenomenon of national patriotism. Try as he might 
Edward could not subdue the Scots; as he lay dying he ordered 
that his bones be carried with the English army until Scotland 
be subdued. The weakness of Edward II contributed to Scottish 
success; and so Scotland remained Scotch. 

The thirty years that lie between the death of Edward I and 
the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War cover the reign of 
Edward II and the minority of Edward III. Edward II is again 
of the weak side of the Norman house. He had not even Henry 
Ill’s private virtues but displayed a fondness for vulgar pas¬ 
times and baseborn favorites. The machinery of government 
continued to function smoothly, but its control slipped com¬ 
pletely from the king’s grasp. The worst of it was, Edward II 
did not care. Successive combinations of self-seeking barons 
took charge of national affairs, the last being led by Edward’s 
faithless queen and her lover. The king was dethroned in 1327 
and probably murdered. The new king, also named Edward, 
was only thirteen years old, but it was not long before he had 


MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND 


499 


taken the measure of the evil group that surrounded him. With 
a sudden decisive effort he freed himself from their control and 
became his own master. 

For Further Reading 

G. M. Trevelyan, History of England, bk. II, chaps. 1 to 5 

E. Wingfield-Stratford, The History of British Civilization , bk. I, 

chaps. 4, 5, and 6 

Cambridge Mediaeval History , V, chaps. 16 and 17; VI, chaps. 7 and 8 
A. B. White, The Making of the English Constitution 

G. B. Adams, Political History of England, 1066-1216 

H. W. C. Davis, England under the Normans and Angevins 
T. F. Tout, Political History of England, 1216-1377 

W. H. Hutton, Thomas Becket 
L. F. Salzman, Henry II 
K. Norgate, John Lackland 

F. M. Powicke, Stephen Langton 

W. S. McKechnie, Magna Carta. (Second edition) 

K. Norgate, The Minority of Henry III 

T. F. Tout, Edward I 

C. Bemont, Simon de Montfort 

A. L. Smith, Church and State in the Middle Ages 

A. F. Pollard, The Evolution of Parliament 


CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE 


FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN THE LATER MIDDLE 
AGES: FOURTEENTH CENTURY 

Causes of the Hundred Years’ War 

In his wars in Wales and Scotland Edward I had been fol¬ 
lowing out a trend of English history which we may regard as 
natural and inevitable, namely, the unification of Great Britain. 
A similar trend is observable in France, namely, the unification 
of all the territory that lay within the French “ natural bound¬ 
aries”. Long ago Caesar had defined those boundaries as the 
Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. We have seen how suc¬ 
cessive kings of France had striven for the unity of this area, 
more or less consciously. In Philip the Fair, the contemporary 
of Edward I, the natural boundaries of France became, at last, 
a conscious objective. 

For a long time the major difficulty of the French kings had 
been that much of the land of France was held by the kings of 
England. To be sure the possessions of the English kings were 
subject to French over lordship, but a stiff-necked king is not 
a very satisfactory vassal. The French monarchy had won a 
great victory when the English king was ousted from Nor¬ 
mandy, Anjou, Touraine, and Maine (1204). But it seemed 
that it was to be thus far and no farther. A century passed and 
the English king still remained lord of Aquitaine, that is, of 
not less than a quarter of the France of that day. Indeed, the 
English authority in Aquitaine seemed stronger at the close 
of the thirteenth century than at its beginning. Through ten 
years without a break two successive kings of France had put 
forth their full military strength in an effort to loosen Edward Ps 
hold on Aquitaine, yet the English king did not relax his grip; 
indeed, he promptly set to work to improve the administration 
of the duchy, to fortify its towns, and to foster the already sub¬ 
stantial trade between Bordeaux and England. The Hundred 

500 


FRANCE AND ENGLAND 


501 


Years’ War, then, was merely the renewal of a struggle for 
Aquitaine already old. 

There was another conflict of French and English interests 
in a different quarter. Flanders was at this time the most im¬ 
portant industrial region of Europe. The countryside was 
dotted with thriving towns. The principal industry was textiles, 
and the chief source of raw wool was England. Indeed, Flanders 
had become England’s most important commercial connection. 
Now the count of Flanders was a French vassal. He had been 
driven out by his subjects in the early fourteenth century, but 
he was restored in 1328 with the assistance of his overlord 
Philip VI of France. It was a bloody struggle, during which 
10,000 Flemings were killed. At the French king’s orders and 
in pursuance of an anti-English policy the count ordered the 
arrest of all English merchants in Flanders. Edward III, newly 
come to the throne of England, retaliated by forbidding the 
export of English wool to Flanders. Thus the Flemish weavers 
were thrown out of employment, and during the hard winter 
which followed they paraded the streets of their towns to call 
attention to their starving condition. A few of the destitute 
weavers of Flanders made their way to England, under the 
encouragement of the English king. Some of them settled in a 
Norfolk town called Worsted, whence the cloth of that name. 

But there was no relief in sight for the majority of the Flemish 
weavers and so they proceeded to organize, under a merchant of 
Ghent named Jacob van Artevelde. Thus led, the merchants 
and weavers of Flanders again drove out the count and sought 
a renewal of the commercial connection with England. There 
was thus a clash of French and English interests in Flanders. 
The trouble in Flanders was more recent than the trouble in 
Aquitaine and it was destined to be less long lived. But while 
it lasted it was more intense. Indeed, it is in Flanders that we 
must look for the immediate cause of the outbreak of the 
Hundred Years’ War. 

There was a third trouble area, namely, the English Channel 
and the North Sea. Since the twelfth century English and 
French sailors had been bitter rivals in those waters, each seek¬ 
ing to drive the others from the fishing grounds known as the 


502 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Dogger Bank and, in general, to secure for themselves a mo¬ 
nopoly of the trade. Clashes between the Norman and Breton 
sailors on the one hand and the English sailors on the other 
had been frequent. Each side had continually made complaint 
against the other, and the mutual recriminations of the sailors 
gave heat and color to the disagreement of the English and 
French kings on other subjects. Thus we may say that the 
clash of English and French interests in Aquitaine was the 
fundamental and enduring cause of the Hundred Years’ War; 
the trouble in Flanders was the immediate cause; but actual 
hostilities broke out among the sailors. 

In 1340 Philip VI collected a large fleet of Norman and Breton 
vessels, to which he added a fleet of forty galleys hired from 
Genoa. The design of the French king was to sweep the English 
sailors from the North Sea and to break the commercial connec¬ 
tion between England and Flanders once and for all. Edward III 
gathered ships from the English ports and, aided by some 
Flemish vessels, took the offensive. He sighted the French 
fleet at Sluys, a harbor on the coast of Flanders. The battle was 
fiercely contested but the issue did not long remain in doubt. 
The French fleet was utterly scattered or destroyed. English 
supremacy on the sea was never successfully questioned during 
the remainder of the Hundred Years’ War. This alone made 
possible the famous triumphs of the English at Crecy, Poitiers, 
and Agincourt. 

So far nothing has been said about the time honored “cause” 
of the Hundred Years’ War, namely, the claim of Edward III 
to be the rightful king of France. Even now nothing would be 
said about this matter were it not for the fact that so much has 
been said about it. After an unbroken descent in the direct 
male line of remarkable length the Capetian house, in 1328, 
found itself faced with a succession problem. The last four 
Capetian kings had had many daughters but no sons. A break 
in the succession had twice been avoided by passing over the 
daughter in favor of a younger brother of the late king. But 
Charles IV (1322-1328) was the last of the younger brothers. 
If inheritance through daughters were admitted, Edward III 
of England would then have had an excellent claim to be the 


FRANCE AND ENGLAND 


503 


king of France, for his mother had been a French princess; but 
this possibility was definitely ruled out by the French Estates 
General. It was decided to bestow the crown upon Charles IV’s 
cousin, Philip of Valois (Philip VI, 1328-1350). In this decision 
Edward III had acquiesced, and in due time he did homage to 
Philip for his French possessions. 

In 1340, however, in the first great crisis of the Hundred 
Years* War, with the battle of Sluys impending and the Flemish 
townsmen in revolt against their count, Edward was asked to 
reconsider his waiver of claim. Jacob van Artevelde found him¬ 
self and his followers in a most difficult position. The dispos¬ 
sessed count of Flanders, with the backing of the French king, 
had appealed to the pope for aid. The latter formally called 
upon the Flemings to lay down their arms and cease fighting 
against the king of France, on penalty of 200,000 gold florins. 
To the acute mind of Jacob van Artevelde came the question, 
who is the rightful king of France? Why not Edward of Eng¬ 
land? If Edward would assume the title of “King of France’* 
the Flemish might continue the contest and evade the papal 
penalty. Edward of England welcomed the suggestion and of¬ 
ficially assumed the style and title “King of France.” He quar¬ 
tered the lilies of France on the royal shield of England and 
adopted the famous motto Dieu et mon droit. Thus the claim of 
Edward to the throne of France was an afterthought and must 
be considered as merely a strategic move in the game of diplo¬ 
macy and war. 

England’s Preparations for War. The Long Bow 

With the war thus fairly launched, Edward III and his min¬ 
isters made every effort to obtain national support for the 
enterprise. The king explained the issues to Parliament, and 
the sheriffs were instructed to pass the word along to the shire 
courts; even the parish priests were enjoined to talk to their 
parishioners about the war. And there was much in the issues 
of the war to interest the various classes of Englishmen. The 
clergy felt ill-disposed towards France because of the alleged 
French influence in the papal hierarchy. English merchants 
were anxious to keep up the trade with Aquitaine and Flanders. 


504 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


The English peasants were vitally interested in the Flemish 
market for English wool. The prospect of glory and booty at¬ 
tracted the knights and barons. 

The interest of all classes in the French wars is reflected in 
the make-up of England’s armies. During the English wars 
with Wales and Scotland a revolution had been effected in the 
art of war. The main reliance was no longer placed upon 
heavily armed knights on horseback, whose concerted charge 
usually carried everything before them. A new weapon had 
been invented, and new tactics developed. The new weapon 
was the long bow. This was perhaps a Welsh invention origi¬ 
nally, but it had been improved upon by the Scotch and the 
English until it had become a most formidable affair. In range, 
penetration, and accuracy the long bow was the best missile 
weapon developed in Europe until the invention of the breach¬ 
loading rifle. With an extreme range of 600 yards the cloth- 
yard arrow could pierce armor at a distance of 100 yards. To 
develop the strength and skill to wield such a weapon effectively 
required many years of training, beginning in boyhood. Only 
in a country where archery had become the great national sport, 
therefore, would a sufficient number of archers be available. 

But the long bow without the proper tactics is relatively 
useless. After years of experimenting in the use of archers the 
English commanders had finally developed the essential tac¬ 
tics. These never varied; they were employed in all the English 
campaigns in France with a success that was only too terrible. 
The field of battle would be selected as carefully as possible; it 
was desirable to make use of the natural shelter of woods or 
swamps in the rear and on the flanks. The battle ground having 
been selected, the English army would take up its stand and 
invite attack. The center of the line was made up of knights, 
dismounted and close ranked, a solid core of resistance. On the 
wings, curving slightly forward on each side, were the yeoman 
archers. When the expected charge of the French knights came 
the archers would riddle the advancing column with their deadly 
fire, bringing down horses and riders in a confused tangle. 
Welsh and Irish camp followers would then rush out and help 
finish off the enemy knights or hold them for ransom. 


FRANCE AND ENGLAND 


505 


The English army was thus a cross-section of the English 
nation, a really national army. We should note further that the 
English soldiers were paid, and well paid, out of the royal 
treasury. Thus they owed obedience to the king alone and not 
to a feudal overlord. The greater unity of England, the direct 
command of the king over all his soldiers, together with the 
long bow and the tactics that go with it, explain why little 
England made such a remarkable showing in her long war with 
France. 


The Crecy Campaign 

It will be well at this point to follow briefly the course of the 
Hundred Years’ War to the end of the fourteenth century. In 
1346 Edward III determined to lead an expedition to Gascony, 
where the French had been gaining ground. Assembling his 
knights and archers at Portsmouth, the king set his course for 
Bordeaux. Delayed and discouraged by persistent storms, 
Edward determined to turn about and land in Normandy. 
Such a sudden change of plan might well have been rewarded 
with disaster. Edward’s luck held, however; for, anticipating 
attack from Gascony, the French king had failed to make any 
provision for the defense of Normandy. Landing in the Co- 
tentin, Edward made his way up the Seine, discovered a ford, 
and crossed to the north to join his Flemish allies. On the way 
northward Edward found himself faced at last with a French 
army. Choosing his ground and disposing his troops in the way 
explained above, Edward awaited the attack. The French 
charged with the greatest bravery again and again, but were 
beaten off each time with heavy losses. More than 1200 French 
knights were killed, including many of the greatest nobles of the 
realm. In other ranks the French losses were between 15,000 
and 20,000. The English losses were slight, less than half a 
hundred all told. 

After this magnificent victory Edward encountered no further 
opposition in the field. Continuing his way northward, he de¬ 
termined to lay siege to Calais. His purpose was two-fold, first, 
to clean out a nest of pestilent pirates, and secondly to convert 
Calais into an English base from which to launch subsequent 


506 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


campaigns on French soil. After a notable siege Calais surren¬ 
dered. Edward spent much thought and money on its forti¬ 
fications, and Calais remained an English stronghold for more 
than two centuries. 

The Battle of Poitiers and the Peace of Br^tigny 

The Cr6cy campaign was followed by a truce, for which both 
sides were ready. Edward of England, though the victor, had 
exhausted his financial resources; we must not forget that as 
compared with France mediaeval England was small, under¬ 
populated, and poor. During the truce the French continued 
their attempts to undermine English authority in Aquitaine. 
This led to a reinforcement of English troops in that quarter, 
and Edward made his oldest son, the Black Prince, who had 
won his spurs at Crecy, duke of Aquitaine. Determining to 
resume the offensive but with no very clear plan in mind, the 
Black Prince led an English army northward toward the Loire. 
Suddenly the young prince found himself faced by a French 
army at least ten times the size of his own and led by King John 
of France in person. In a panic of fear the Black Prince offered 
to give up all his booty and prisoners and to agree not to bear 
arms against France again for seven years. Confident of victory, 
the French king spurned these overtures and ordered his fol¬ 
lowers to spare no one save the Black Prince alone. In the battle 
of Poitiers which followed (1356) the English employed the 
same tactics as at Crecy and won an even more complete victory. 
King John was captured with three of his sons, along with 
thousands of others. Many thousands of the French were slain, 
and the English losses were again trifling. King John’s ransom 
was fixed at one and a half million English pounds. 

The disaster of Poitiers, coupled with the disorders of the 
next few years, led the French king to accept the terms of peace 
now offered by England. The Peace of Bretigny (1360) provided 
that Aquitaine was to be enlarged by the addition of Poitou, 
which England had acknowledged as lost just a century earlier. 
Calais and the northern county of Ponthieu were ceded to the 
English also. All these possessions, be it noted, were to be held 
by the English in full sovereignty. The farce of a feudal tie 


FRANCE AND ENGLAND 


507 


between the English king and the French king was thus dis¬ 
continued; in return, the English king dropped his claim to be 
king of France. It was hoped that the treaty of Bretigny would 
make for permanent peace; but with England in possession of 
one-third of France this could not be. 



Charles V Saves France from the Free Companies 

King John le Bon of France (1350-1364), “happy-go-lucky, 
feather-head, debonair, self-indulgent, worthless”, was soon 
succeeded by his son Charles V, the Wise (1364-1380). The 
latter was one of the strong kings of France, an organizer and 
an administrator, however rather than a warrior. As evidence 
of his serious purpose the young king let it be known that he 
had adopted Louis IX as his model. “The sainted Louis, flower 













508 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


in our banner and mirror not only of our royal race but 
of all the French, shall be our patron and defender. His 
life shall be our guide.” We may add that Charles V, though 
he failed to become a saint like Louis, did contrive to 
make of himself an exceedingly able politician. He was 
crafty, patient, and tenacious, and he had need of all these 
qualities. 

The end of fighting had brought unemployment to thousands 
of fighting men, English and French alike. Unlike the unem¬ 
ployed of to-day, these fighting men organized themselves into 
“free companies” and proceeded to engage in free lance fighting 
throughout France. These companies were made up of horse¬ 
men and archers, just like the English armies. They varied in 
numbers from a few hundred to several thousands. The fighting 
men wore shirts of fine chain mail called brigantin, and it is a 
sufficient commentary on their activities that our word “brig¬ 
and” is thus derived. The free companies had no mercy on any 
class of folk, whether women, children, or priests; all were 
robbed, murdered, or held for ransom. Villages were burned, 
the live stock killed or driven off, the standing grain cut 
down or fired. The various leaders of these companies, 
like modern gangsters, divided France among them, observ¬ 
ing a nice scrupulosity in keeping each to his own sphere of 
plunder. Among the more famous leaders of these companies 
were Sir Walter Manny, a Fleming, and Sir John Hawkwood, 
an Englishman. 

To rid France of this terrible scourge, worse than the North¬ 
men, King Charles V called to his service a soldier already 
famous for his qualities as a hard hitter and remarkable alike 
for physical strength and ugliness. This was Bertrand du 
Guesclin, one of the lesser nobility of Brittany. Du Guesclin 
recruited his forces from the free companies themselves, offering 
regular pay and steady employment. To draw the marauders 
away from France du Guesclin led an expedition across the 
Pyrenees into Castile. There was a succession struggle going 
on there in which the Black Prince had already intervened. The 
French candidate proved successful and the Black Prince re¬ 
turned to Bordeaux to die of fever. 


FRANCE AND ENGLAND 


509 


Weakening of the English Hold on Gascony 

Returning to France, du Guesclin waged war on the English 
in Aquitaine, in which he was increasingly successful. Declining 
to meet the English in the open, he employed guerrilla tactics, 
hanging on the English flanks, cutting off stragglers, and laying 
waste the countryside. The English hold on Gascony became 
weaker and weaker until little more than the two coast towns 
of Bordeaux and Bayonne were left. In 1389 a thirty years’ 
truce was negotiated and with this the first period of the 
Hundred Years’ War closes. 

The Social and Economic Revolution of the 
Fourteenth Century 

Meanwhile a profound social and economic revolution was 
slowly transforming society in both France and England. It 
will be recalled that every society in western Europe was di¬ 
vided into three classes or estates, the clergy, the nobility, and 
the commons; or the oratores , the bellatores, and the labor antes, 
as the mediaeval Latinists put it. The third estate had long 
lived in unquestioning submission to the other two. During the 
fourteenth century, however, this submission came to be ques¬ 
tioned, and the commons, both urban and rural, sought de¬ 
terminedly to improve their position. In the cities this move¬ 
ment took the form of a struggle between labor and capital, of 
a very modern sort; indeed, it may be said that the fourteenth 
century is the most important period in the history of labor 
until recent times. Although in what follows we shall be think¬ 
ing of conditions in France and England, similar developments 
were going on at about the same time in other parts of western 
Europe. 


Emancipation of the Serfs 

Let us consider, first, the developments in rural society. The 
cardinal fact that emerges here is that of the emancipation of 
the serfs. This was a long process beginning, in general, in the 
thirteenth century and continuing through at least one hundred 
and fifty years. It came earlier in France than in England, and 


510 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


in Normandy earliest of all. But wherever and whenever it 
came, the process was essentially the same. The initiative was 
generally taken by the lord, his motive being to increase the 
profits of his estate. The truth is that the manorial system was 
a wasteful system. Its consumption of human labor was enor¬ 
mous. This was partly due to the system of open-field farming. 
The intermingling of the strips made it practically impossible to 
introduce any improvements in agricultural methods. Further¬ 
more, the serf was a reluctant laborer. He came to his lord’s 
domain “all tired out” from labor on his own land. It is esti¬ 
mated that hired labor is at least three times as productive as is 
servile labor. Progressive landlords therefore began to com¬ 
mute the labor service of their serfs into a money payment. 
With funds thus derived, these lords could then hire the labor 
necessary to cultivate the demesne; or better still, the demesne 
could be leased for a money rent. Of course the lords did 
not waive all their rights. Their monopoly of the hunting and 
fishing privileges were usually retained; and they still com¬ 
pelled their tenants to work on the roads and to grind corn at 
their mills. Of course serfs would not oppose commutation. 
Through emancipation they became renters of their little fields. 
And the moral gain was great. The former serfs were now free 
men, not bound to the soil; they could leave the manor and go 
elsewhere if they chose. 

The process of commutation involved a familiarity with the 
use of money and also the proximity of a market where peasants 
could sell their surplus produce. A town was the essential center 
of an area in which emancipation was going on. The rapidity 
of emancipation in western Europe depended therefore upon 
the growth of towns. The towns also entered the picture in 
another way. In many of the cities of northern and western 
Europe the textile industry had established itself. There de¬ 
veloped, therefore, a considerable and constant demand for 
wool. Some landlords, more especially in England, found it 
much more profitable to sweep the serfs off the land altogether 
and raise sheep. Sheep raising requires only a few laborers. 
Thus pasture farms with a handful of shepherds began to take 
the place of the older “manors full of serfs”. 


FRANCE AND ENGLAND 


511 


The Black Death 

The slow and orderly process of emancipation was hastened 
by the ravages of a dreadful scourge that devastated western 
Europe between 1348 and 1350. This was the Black Death or 
bubonic plague. This dread disease had long been endemic in 
the Orient but had never before attacked western Europe. 
About the middle of the fourteenth century, however, it traveled 
westward along the trade routes to Venice, Genoa, and Pisa. 
From the two latter ports the pestilence made its way to the 
ports of southern France, and thence spread northward and 
westward. England rejoiced for a time in its seeming immunity 
from the “French disease”, but this did not last long. The 
Scotch were free for a few months longer from the “foul death of 
England”. Between one-third and two-thirds of the inhabitants 
of infected areas died of the disease. The general average seems 
to have been about one-half. It reaped its greatest harvest in 
the cities. Venice lost two-thirds of its population, and Boulogne 
two-fifths. In Paris there were 800 deaths a day at the height 
of the plague. The greatest mortality came during the first 
visit but the disease returned at intervals during the next 
seventy-five years. During the “great mortality” of 1348 to 
1350 western Europe lost about 24,000,000 inhabitants, a dis¬ 
aster far greater than Europe recently suffered in the World War. 

An unexampled scarcity of labor naturally followed the first 
ravages of the plague, and repeated visitations made this 
scarcity chronic for half a century. Scarcity of labor led to 
economic crises. The landlords usually sought to check the 
process of emancipation and even to reverse it. Those who had 
already emancipated their serfs attempted to raise rents. The 
English Parliament enacted statutes to fix wages at “pre¬ 
mortality” levels. These statutes were resisted by the laboring 
classes and were freely violated by the landlords themselves in 
their greediness to procure the necessary labor at any price. 

The Peasants’ Revolt 

Emancipation was less complete in England than in France, 
at the time of the Black Death, and a particularly prolonged 


512 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


and severe economic crisis ensued. In 1381 there was a savage 
outbreak of violence among the peasants known as the Peasants’ 
Revolt. The old king, Edward III, after some years of dotage, 
had died in 1377. As the Black Prince was already dead his 
eleven year old son now came to the throne as Richard II. The 
Hundred Years’ War had been going badly for some time. 
Taxes had been very heavy and as usual the poorest classes 
bore the heaviest burdens, for Parliament was dominated by 
landlords and merchants. Quite recently the wealthy had 
sought to unload still more of the burden of taxation by levy¬ 
ing a poll tax, a tax on every person over twelve years of 
age. Attempts to collect this tax struck sparks which 
kindled a fire and most of the southeastern half of England 
flamed up in revolt. The peasants mobbed the tax col¬ 
lectors. They then turned on their landlords, burning mills, 
manor houses, granaries, and stables, and attacking the mon¬ 
asteries. 

A great mob of peasants from nearby counties marched on 
London. They were led by one Wat Tyler, otherwise unknown 
to fame. London offered little resistance and was at the mercy 
of the mob for several days. The leaders sought out govern¬ 
ment officials, demanding a repeal of the poll tax and of the 
Statute of Laborers. Rents must be lowered, they insisted, and 
the emancipation of the serfs completed at once. Intimidation 
was followed by violence. The Lord High Treasurer was killed 
and so was the Chancellor, who happened to be the archbishop 
of Canterbury. The terror-stricken merchants rallied, finally, 
under the leadership of the fifteen year old king, whose coolness 
and courage seem to have saved the situation. Wat Tyler was 
treacherously murdered and the peasants were disarmed by 
fair promises and sent home. Recovering from their fright, the 
governing class repudiated all promises and wreaked a fearful 
vengeance on the peasants. The economic results of the Peas¬ 
ants’ Revolt were practically nil. Emancipation may have been 
slightly hastened; certainly it was not delayed. Perhaps the 
most important result of the revolt was to embitter the upper 
classes against the lower and to establish the former still more 
firmly in control of Parliament. 


FRANCE AND ENGLAND 


513 


The Jacquerie 

Corresponding to the Peasants’ Revolt of England was the 
Jacquerie of France, though it came earlier and was of less im¬ 
portance. In France as in England the Black Death had been 
followed by labor scarcity and the raising of rents. There, too, 
very heavy taxation ground the faces of the poor. Probably all 
would have been well, however, but for the fearful defeat at 
Poitiers. The French nobility returned from that battle to find 
themselves covered with abuse by the peasants of their own 
estates. There followed the terrible scourge of the free com¬ 
panies. The peasants found themselves without protection 
whether at the hands of the government or of their lords, to 
whom they had always been taught to look for protection. In 
a despairing effort at self-help some villages converted the 
parish churches into fortifications. 

Suddenly, the peasants in the north of France turned against 
their lords in a fury of destruction. The embittered peasants 
were not bloodthirsty; they confined their attention to the 
destruction of property. Only thirty persons are known to have 
been killed by the mobs. The government and the landlord 
classes were thoroughly angered, however, and they planned 
an atrocious revenge. More than 20,000 peasants were slain. 
It will be seen that in France the landlord class was relatively 
larger, more powerful, and more class-conscious than in England. 

The Urban Workers Become Class-Conscious 

Meanwhile there was an important movement among the 
urban proletariat of France, especially among the towns of 
Flanders. The movement was not confined to Flanders but 
spread into other parts of the Low Countries and northern 
France. We have traced the development of the institutions of 
self-government in the cities of northern and western Europe. 
The control of municipal affairs in those cities had now become 
lodged in the hands of a few wealthy bourgeoisie. A common 
concern for the rights of property had created a community of 
interest between the bourgeoisie and the local clergy and no¬ 
bility. The urban workers, tens of thousands of them by this 


514 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


time, were quite without political privileges. They were ex¬ 
ploited by both employers and landlords and lived a slum 
existence. 

During the fourteenth century a certain amount of class- 
consciousness developed among the urban proletariat. It ex¬ 
pressed itself in periodic revolts against the propertied and 
privileged classes. These revolts were characterized by blind 
fury, hideous excesses being committed by workers who hardly 
knew what they were fighting for. The risings were usually 
suppressed by a concerted effort of the propertied classes, with 
atrocities which more than matched the excesses of the workers. 
Such a rebellion was the one which broke out in Ypres and in 
Bruges in 1323. Led by two working men the mob waged war 
on all rich men, including the clergy, and established a reign of 
terror. The feudal nobility, led by the count of Flanders and 
backed by the king of France, combined with the wealthy 
bourgeoisie, and the revolt was put down in 1328. Another 
revolt was that led by Jacob van Artevelde. For seven years 
(1328-1335) he kept the movement alive, aided, as we have 
seen, by an alliance with the king of England. At length, how¬ 
ever, the workers began to fight among themselves, and their 
leader was slain. Other risings of workers took place at intervals 
during the century. 

Marcel Leads a Revolt 

The most famous movement of the urban proletariat, how¬ 
ever, was that which brought France to the verge of revolution 
in 1357. The battle of Poitiers had been lost and the French 
king and three of his sons captured. In the Estates General, 
then in session, a remarkable leader came forward to give ex¬ 
pression to the widespread discontent. This was Etienne Marcel. 
He was provost of the merchants of Paris, to which office he had 
been elected in 1355. The merchants themselves were divided 
in their political views. Most of them remained loyal to the 
king and the nobility, whom they had backed financially and 
to whom they looked for patronage. A small group, however, 
supported Marcel. This group was powerfully reinforced by the 
lower classes of Paris, the small shopkeepers, artisans, and wage 


FRANCE AND ENGLAND 


515 


earners. There was much unemployment. Indeed, the menace 
of the mob was Marcel’s mightiest weapon in what followed. 

As a member of the third estate Marcel spoke out in the 
sessions of 1356 and 1357. He demanded the punishment of the 
king’s councilors by name. He demanded that henceforth all 
taxes be levied upon all classes of the people equally, that the 
proceeds be spent as the Estates General might direct, and that 
the accounts be audited by the Estates. He demanded, further, 
that a council be appointed by the Estates, half of commoners, 
and that the king act only by and with the advice and consent 
of this council. King John was still a prisoner of war in England, 
immersed in a life of social diversion and sport and in no hurry 
to return. His son the dauphin was regent at Paris. To put 
pressure upon the regent, Marcel invaded the palace at the 
head of his mob and stabbed to death two of the royal officials. 
The dauphin was handed a red and blue cap, symbol of the 
people; it is interesting to note that these popular colors, red 
and blue, with the white of the Bourbons, constitute the tri¬ 
color of France to-day. For the moment the mob was master 
and it maintained itself by terror and destruction. Partly re¬ 
covering from his fright, the dauphin fled from Paris to rally 
the forces of “law and order”. As was perhaps inevitable the 
popular movement, meanwhile, began to disintegrate. Marcel 
was assassinated. He had underestimated the prestige of the 
monarchy, and he had tried to move too fast. Public opinion 
was disposed to blame evil councilors and corrupt officials for 
the disasters of the reign, and not the monarchy itself. In the 
end the royal authority triumphed completely over the prole¬ 
tariat of Paris. 

In the Lowlands, too, the central authority won a complete 
victory. The popular rebellions in Bruges, Ghent, and other 
cities during the early decades of the fifteenth century were 
stamped out by the dukes of Burgundy. In general, then, we 
may say that the fourteenth century struggles of the common 
people, urban and rural, to improve their economic condition 
and to gain political privileges failed; and further that it was 
the central government which profited most by the failure. The 
feudal nobility and the merchant aristocracy were weakened. 


516 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Growth of English Nationalism 

The fourteenth century was also notable for the growth of 
national self-consciousness, especially in England. There was 
little national feeling in England at the beginning of the Hun¬ 
dred Years’ War. English knights fought the French with every 
courtesy and with scrupulous regard for the rules of the game. 
During the frequent truces English knights traveled through¬ 
out France, associating freely with their former enemies. In the 
year after Cr6cy the countess of Pembroke founded a college 
at Cambridge in which Frenchmen were given the preference 
over Englishmen in all appointments. We may compare with 
this the action of the British Parliament in canceling the Ger¬ 
man Rhodes scholarships during the World War. The first 
battle of the Hundred Years’ War that was fought to the death 
was the battle of Sluys, but the contestants there were not 
“gentlemen” but sailors. Indeed, it is significant that the 
growth of national consciousness came first among the common 
people and not among the clergy or nobility. Here England was 
ahead of France. Her yeomen fought with bow and arrow side 
by side with the English knights. They also sat with them in 
the House of Commons. The English nation was much more 
united behind their king at the beginning of the war than was 
the French. It was not until after Joan of Arc that France 
caught up with England in this respect. 

Increasing Use of the English Language 

One feature of the development of nationalism in England 
was the increased use of the English language. English came 
to be used in the law courts, in Parliament, in literature, and 
even in society during the fourteenth century. Ridicule had 
something to do with this increased use of English, for when the 
English knights went to France they found themselves laughed 
at for their faulty use of the French tongue. As the war pro¬ 
gressed and the English fighting spirit rose the hatred of the 
English for the French was extended to hatred of the latter’s 
language. In other words, French ceased to be the language of 
prestige in England. Six years after Poitiers Parliament made 


FRANCE AND ENGLAND 


517 


it a law that all pleadings and judgments in the law courts 
should be in the English tongue. The king opened Parliament 
that year with a speech in English. English began to displace 
French in the schools also. As a writer of 1385 observed, “In 
alle the gramer scholes of Engelande children leveth Frensche 
and construeth and lerneth in Englische.” Early in the next 
century the first French grammars and lexicons appeared, show¬ 
ing that French was no longer the native tongue of Englishmen. 
Finally, a new literature in English began to appear. “ The Vision 
of Piers Plowman”, by an unknown leader of the common people, 
and “The Canterbury Tales”, by the cultured and worldly 
Chaucer, are among the masterpieces of English literature. 

Anti-Papal Hostility in England 

Another evidence of the development of national feeling in 
England during the fourteenth century was the popular hos¬ 
tility to clergy and pope. From 1309 to 1377 the papal court 
was in residence at Avignon. A majority of the college of car¬ 
dinals was always French and all the popes of the period were 
Frenchmen. There was a feeling in England that the papacy 
had come under French control. This feeling was expressed 
in various ways. Parliament passed a statute forbidding the 
pope to fill English clerical posts (Statute of Pro visors, 1351), 
an abuse of more than a century’s standing. Another act de¬ 
clared that any one who carried an appeal out of England to 
the papal court without the king’s consent was guilty of treason 
(Statute of Praemunire, 1353). Again, the annual tribute of 
one thousand marks, demanded and paid since England be¬ 
came a papal fief in 1213, ceased to be paid about this time. 

Another channel for the expression of popular hostility to the 
church was literature. Both the “Piers Plowman” and “The 
Canterbury Tales” are full of criticism of the clergy and of hos¬ 
tility to the papacy. The climax of English anti-clericalism came 
in the career and the teachings of John Wyclif, a leading scholar 
of Oxford University. This is not the place to explore Wyclif’s 
views or to study his career. The national character of Wyclifism 
is indicated by the fact that to gain popular support Wyclif 
translated the Bible into the national language. 




518 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


For Further Reading 

R. Lodge, The Close of the Middle Ages, chap. 4 

K. H. Vickers, England in the Later Middle Ages, chaps. 6 to 16 
T. F. Tout, The History of England, 1216-1377, chaps. 12 to 19 
E. Wingfield-Stratford, The History of British Civilization, bk. I, 
chap. 6 

J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of Europe in the Later 
Middle Ages, chaps. 2 and 3 
. Cunningham, English Industry and Commerce, vol. I 
. J. Ashley, English Economic History, vol. II 
M. Trevelyan, England in the Age of Wycliffe 
The Chronicles of John Froissart (numerous editions) 

The Vision of Piers Plowman, by William Langland (The Mediaeval 
Library) 

The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. by W. W. Skeat 
G. B. Adams, Growth of the French Nation 

G. W. Kitchin, History of France, vol. I 
E. V. Stoddard, Bertrand du Guesclin 

H. S. Lucas, The Low Countries and the Hundred Years’ War 
H. Pirenne, Belgian Democracy, chap. 4 

C. W. C. Oman, History of the Art of War 

S. B. Terry, Financing of the Hundred Years’ War, 1337-1369 


CHAPTER THIRTY 


FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN THE LATER MIDDLE 
AGES: FIFTEENTH CENTURY 

The House of Lancaster gains the Throne of England 

We have seen that from the Peace of Bretigny to the close of 
the fourteenth century England slowly lost ground in the south 
of France. That the English embarked on no triumphant cam¬ 
paign like Crecy or Poitiers to redress the balance was due not 
to any loss of military prowess but to political difficulties. In 
1377 the boy king Richard II succeeded his grandfather, as we 
have seen. Richard was not among the wisest or most forceful 
of English kings, to be sure, but the prime cause of the disasters 
of his reign was too many uncles. Richard had no less than five 
of them, one being the redoubtable John of Gaunt (Ghent), the 
greatest baron of England and a clever and self-seeking politi¬ 
cian. Richard foolishly allowed himself to be jockeyed into the 
position of enemy of Parliament, while his baronial opponents, 
no more the friends of parliamentary government than Richard 
was, made loud protestations in favor of it. John of Gaunt 
eventually died and was succeeded both in his estates and in his 
political policy by his son, Henry of Lancaster. Banished by the 
king, Henry returned in 1399 and challenged Richard’s right to 
the throne. Poor Richard was deposed by act of Parliament and 
Henry of Lancaster was declared king. 

The new king, Henry IV, founder of the House of Lancaster, 
claimed to rule by hereditary right. This was palpably false, 
however, and Henry found himself compelled to live up to his 
campaign promise, that is, to rule in strict harmony with the 
will of Parliament. However unrepresentative of the people of 
England as a whole, Parliament did represent all those classes 
who counted for anything in the English society of the day. 
A revolt in Wales added to the king’s perplexities and a chronic 

519 


520 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


ailment helped to shorten his life. Renewal of the war with 
France on a great scale, or indeed on any scale, was beyond the 
range of Henry IV. 

His son, Henry V (1414-1422), however, was in a different 
situation. Young and vigorous, with great military ability al¬ 
ready demonstrated in the Welsh wars, and with the House of 
Lancaster well established in England, the new king determined 
to renew the war. It was a popular decision. The nobles wel¬ 
comed the opportunity for glory and booty, the merchants had 
been suffering again from the attacks of French privateers, and 
the yeomanry welcomed employment and the opportunity for 
easy wealth. 


Civil War in France 

French extremity was Henry’s opportunity. Civil war had 
broken out in France. It had had its beginnings a quarter of a 
century earlier when King Charles VI (1380-1442), son of 
Charles V, went mad. It would seem that the young king’s 
delicate health had broken under the strain of a series of gay 
parties, with which the French nobility of the period amused 
themselves. The king announced his insanity, in 1392, by killing 
several persons before he could be restrained. His insanity was 
of the intermittent type, being worse in hot weather. It is said 
that playing cards were invented for the amusement of this 
unfortunate monarch. The misfortune of the monarch was 
matched by that of France. A fight broke out among the 
“princes of the Lilies”, as the barons closest to the throne were 
called, for control of the government. The leader of one faction 
was the duke of Burgundy. Besides holding the French duchy 
of that name, the duke of Burgundy had lately succeeded to 
the county of Flanders, the richest land in Christendom, and to 
the German county of Burgundy. The leader of the rival fac¬ 
tion was the duke of Orleans, a younger brother of the king, 
whose lands lay in the valley of the Loire and in other parts of 
the south and west of France. 

The fight for the control of the crown had reached such a 
pitch of bitterness that in 1407 the duke of Orleans was mur¬ 
dered in Paris by the agents of the duke of Burgundy, who 


FIFTEENTH CENTURY FRANCE AND ENGLAND 521 


openly admitted his responsibility for the crime. The new duke 
of Orleans being too young for active leadership, his father-in- 
law, Bernard, count of Armagnac, a powerful noble of the south 
of France, became the leader of the Orleanists. Open war now 
broke out between the factions. It was not merely a senseless 
blood feud between rival gangs of nobles. The civil war was 
essentially a renewal of the old struggle between the north and 
the south of France, now rivals for the control of the crown. 
The prime objective of each side was to seize Paris, the seat of 
government, and the valley of the Seine. The civil war had 
an economic and social significance also. The Burgundians rep¬ 
resented the industrial and commercial north and northeast of 
France; the Armagnacs, the agricultural and feudal south and 
southwest. In the Great Schism then plaguing the papacy the 
two parties took opposite sides. 

Renewal of the Hundred Years’ War. Agincourt 

But it is time we noted the significance for England of the 
Burgundian-Armagnac struggle. To Henry V it was a Heaven¬ 
sent opportunity. His father had already prepared the way 
for intervention by sending help to both parties, hoping to 
increase the turmoil. In 1414 the Armagnacs won the upper 
hand, gaining control of Paris, the queen, and the dauphin. The 
Burgundians promptly got into touch with the English, and 
Henry V decided upon invasion. He demanded of the French 
government, now controlled by the Armagnacs, the hand of 
Catherine, daughter of Charles VI, and the cession of Nor¬ 
mandy, Maine, and Anjou as her dowry. This demand was not 
unnaturally refused, but the extremity of the situation is in¬ 
dicated by the French proffer of Catherine with the whole of 
Aquitaine and 800,000 crowns. Spurning this offer in his turn, 
Henry V boldly claimed the French crown and prepared for 
invasion. 

The English king landed at the mouth of the Seine with 15,- 
000 men. His forces were sadly decimated by dysentery, how¬ 
ever, during the siege of Harfleur. Taking that city at last, 
Henry struck across country for Calais. At Agincourt he found 
himself faced by a French army at least six times as large as 


522 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


his own. This army was composed principally of the followers 
of the Armagnacs. The English tactics were the same as at 
Crecy and Poitiers, in the battle which followed, and they were 
even more successful. At least 10,000 of the French were slain. 
After Waterloo, just 400 years later, excavations were made by 
the British on the site of Agincourt and a trench was discovered 
in which it was estimated that 6000 men had been buried. 
Among the captives at Agincourt was the duke of Orleans him¬ 
self. The renown of this famous victory has echoed down the 
centuries; but this is due perhaps to Shakespeare as much as 
to any one else (“King Henry the Fifth ”). 

The Treaty of Troyes 

After a short holiday in England Henry V returned to under¬ 
take the systematic reduction and occupation of Normandy. 
In this he had great success, much of which was due to his 
humane methods and easy terms. But the English success in 
Normandy was partly due, also, to fresh complications in the 
troublesome Burgundian-Armagnac feud. Both sides were too 
busy with each other to pay much attention to the English. 
The duke of Burgundy managed to turn the tables on his ene¬ 
mies and expel them from Paris. We are told that 2000 of the 
Armagnacs were massacred when the city was taken. In the 
following year, however, the duke of Burgundy was murdered, 
thus evening the score of the French factions with one dead 
duke apiece. On their retirement from Paris the Armagnacs 
had taken with them the dauphin, over whose mind they had 
gained the ascendancy. Queen Isabella, the dauphin’s mother, 
now sided with the Burgundians. The new duke of Burgundy, 
Philip the Good, and the queen resolved to make peace with 
the English. In possession of Paris, the Burgundian faction 
claimed to be the government of France. 

The Treaty of Troyes (1420) which followed was the high 
point of English success in the second half of the Hundred 
Years’ War, and even in the whole course of the war. It was 
agreed that Henry Y of England should marry the much dis¬ 
cussed Catherine, become regent of France in the name of 
Charles VI, and on his death succeed him as king. It was further 


FIFTEENTH CENTURY FRANCE AND ENGLAND 523 

agreed that the dauphin should be excluded from the succession, 
and that Henry Y as regent should proceed to bring under the 
authority of the French king the provinces of France still in 
the hands of the Armagnacs. Henry V promptly set about his 
task. He quickly cleared the north of France of the remain¬ 
ing Armagnacs, and was turning his attention to the south 
when he suddenly died, in 1422, at the age of thirty-four. The 
little nine months old son of Henry and Catherine was promptly 
proclaimed king of England and of France, and Henry V’s 
younger brother, the duke of Bedford, was made regent of 
both countries. Meanwhile the dauphin also claimed the throne 
of France, taking the title of Charles VII. 

Although the English cause never prospered south of the 
Loire their hold on the whole of France north of the Loire, in¬ 
credibly enough, was maintained unshaken for the next fifteen 
years. Two men were responsible for this, the duke of Bedford 
and the duke of Burgundy. John, duke of Bedford, was an abler 
man than his brother Henry V. There is something pathetic in 
the contemplation of a man of such fine abilities and self- 
sacrificing devotion wearing out his life in a hopeless attempt 
to reverse the current of history. Bedford’s administration in 
the north of France was so statesmanlike that he made French¬ 
men forget the claims of their lawful king. To bind Burgundy 
more firmly to the English, Bedford married the sister of Philip 
the Good, the leader of the Burgundians. But in 1435 Bedford 
died, and just a week later the duke of Burgundy renounced 
the English alliance, accepting a tempting offer from Charles VII. 
It was evident after this that the expulsion of the English 
would be only a matter of time. 

Rise of French Nationalism 

The English were finally swept out of France by a rising tide 
of French national feeling. The tide had begun to rise before 
the death of Bedford. There had been precious little national 
self-consciousness in France before the fifteenth century. To 
the Normans, Bretons, Angevins, Picards, and other “ na¬ 
tions” France was still the name for the private fief of the house 
of Capet in the upper valley of the Seine. When du Guesclin 


524 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


died toward the end of the fourteenth century he was buried 
in the church of St. Denis near Paris, his heart being sent 
to his ancestral home of Dinan in Brittany. On the monu¬ 
ment erected in the Breton church is the following signifi¬ 
cant inscription, “His heart is here among his compatriots; 
his body reposes with those of the kings at St. Denis in 
France.” 

Evidences of a feeling of common nationality among the va¬ 
rious peoples of France first appeared in the early decades of 
the fifteenth century. Again and again the north of France had 
been ravaged by English, Burgundian, and Armagnac forces. 
As though these were not enough, bands of marauders followed 
in the wake of the hostile armies as gleaners. The economic 
life of the people was practically destroyed and France began 
to lose population by migration. Prosperous towns of ten 
thousand inhabitants became desolate ruins of a few hundred 
refugees. Here and there throughout France voices were 
raised in protest. “Dame France” was portrayed by a contem¬ 
porary writer as a matron in tattered garments standing in 
front of her ruined house with her three children, Noblesse, 
Clerge, and Tiers Etat, whom she upbraided bitterly for not 
coming to her defense; “natural love of country” should in¬ 
spire them, she said. As time went on the voices of protest 
swelled to a chorus. It is significant that most of the writers 
were disposed to blame the English and the English alone for 
the woes of France. French patriotic sentiment, then, was born 
of anti-English feeling, just as English patriotic sentiment 
was originally anti-French. 

Joan of Arc 

The best illustration of the temper of the times is the career 
of Joan of Arc. Joan was a peasant girl, quite uneducated, 
“knowing neither A nor B”, as she later said. She was born 
and lived in the village of Domremy in the northeast of France 
where as a girl she had seen the countryside devasted repeatedly 
by English and Burgundian troops. Joan came to believe that 
God had commissioned her to deliver France from the English. 
In 1428, when Joan was seventeen, the news came to her village 


FIFTEENTH CENTURY FRANCE AND ENGLAND 525 


of the siege of Orleans; having secured the north of France the 
duke of Bedford was besieging the gateway of the south. Thither 
Joan journeyed. Nine days after her arrival the siege, which 
had already lasted for nineteen months, was raised. A few 
months later King Charles VII found it possible to make his 
way to Rheims, where he was crowned king, as all his ancestors 
had been. Joan was present at the ceremony and held the royal 
standard. 

Thus far the success of the Maid had been uninterrupted. 
Inspired by their superstitious confidence in her mission the 
troops of Charles VII had regained their morale, while the 
English and Burgundian forces, filled with an equally super¬ 
stitious terror, had lost theirs. But this did not last long. Joan 
was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English. 
Hoping to destroy her influence completely, the English charged 
Joan with heresy and witchcraft. She was condemned to death. 
Her judges, be it known, were French clergy and French univer¬ 
sity professors. The burning of Joan at Rouen in 1431 and the 
official branding of her as “liar, witch, blasphemer of God, 
idolater, sorcerer, schismatic, heretic” did not have the effect 
intended by her enemies. Joan’s martyrdom made her a na¬ 
tional heroine. Charles VII and his advisers shrewdly took 
advantage of the anti-English sentiment thus engendered. With 
Bedford dead and Burgundy reconciled the English cause in 
the north lost ground steadily, and as the English retired 
the French king was welcomed everywhere and by all classes 
with patriotic enthusiasm. 

Expulsion of the English and End of the War 

It should be added that the final expulsion of the English 
from Gascony was accomplished by the military power of the 
French king, however, and not by the patriotic fervor of the 
Gascons. They remained pro-English to the last, and as late 
as the seventeenth century Gascony was unreconciled to the 
French conquest. The Hundred Years’ War was over. Of all 
their French possessions the English retained, in 1453, Calais 
only, and the outbreak in England of the Wars of the Roses 
prevented further attacks on France. 


526 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Reconstruction in France 

The social effects of so long a war were deplorable. War 
poisons society. It brings to the surface all the baser elements 
in human nature. It makes use of destructive forces which 
sometimes prove too powerful to be controlled even by the 
society that called them into being. How deeply the springs of 
life were poisoned in France is revealed in the career of Fran¬ 
cois Villon, a man who, though lowborn, a murderer, robber, 
rake, and poet, lived on familiar terms with nobles, high clergy, 
and royalty. Leaders of society nowadays require of their 
associates a certain standard of respectability. The poison in 
French life came to the surface, also, in a fresh outbreak of 
brigandage, toward the close of the war. The free lance fighters 
of this period were known as ecorcheurs, or flayers. The English 
themselves were scarcely a greater problem to the government 
of Charles VII. 

To deal with the bandits, as well as to expel the English, 
Charles was compelled to overhaul his whole military system. 
He recruited from all classes of the population an army of some 
sixty thousand, largely foot soldiers, well organized and well 
paid. To pay the troops the Estates General voted a land tax 
which the king was to levy henceforth at his discretion. A re¬ 
markable feature of the new army was its use of artillery. French 
engineers had gradually brought cannon to a high point of per¬ 
fection. The English lost their leadership in the art of war; it 
was French cannon that blew them out of France. It remained 
to deal with the brigands. Some were taken into the army and 
the rest were hunted down and exterminated. An important 
political result of the new army and the new land tax was a 
still further increase in the royal authority. It was the popular 
belief that it was the monarchy that had saved France from 
the English and the French people from the bandits. Thus the 
loyalty of the common people to the monarchy was secured. 

We may continue our survey of the history of France to the 
close of the fifteenth century. Charles VII died in 1461 and 
was succeeded by his son Louis XI (1461-1483). This king has 
been described as “one of the few men destined to do really 


FIFTEENTH CENTURY FRANCE AND ENGLAND 527 

great things and yet not himself be great.” Of poor physique 
and shambling gait Louis was essentially a mean man, making 
use of every one and trusting no one. His personal policy was 
shrewdly conceived and cleverly pursued. This was, briefly, to 
restore and carry forward to completion the organisation of a 
central absolutism. We may merely say that Louis had much 
success. He broke the opposition of the clergy and the nobility. 
He summoned the Estates General but once. Indeed, his posi¬ 
tion at home was so satisfactory that he turned to the expansion 
of French boundaries toward the Rhine. Thus Louis XI was 
“the first king of the modern era who governed without con¬ 
stitutional check upon his will and who set in motion the ma¬ 
chinery of foreign diplomacy for the aggrandisement of France.” 
With him the mediaeval history of France ends and her modern 
history begins. 

Growth in Power of the English Parliament 

The social effects of the Hundred Years’ War in England 
were more evil than in France. They came to the surface in a 
violent eruption called the Wars of the Roses. Since these 
wars had constitutional results, and causes, of great impor¬ 
tance it will be well to consider them as a chapter in the history 
of the English constitution. The fourteenth century had seen 
a remarkable increase in the authority and prestige of Parlia¬ 
ment. Carrying on a long war with France was an expensive 
business and the crown was compelled to go to Parliament 
for money again and again. In Edward Ill’s reign of fifty years 
Parliament met forty-eight times; and it met twenty-four times 
in Richard II’s reign of twenty-two years. Parliament was not 
slow to take advantage of the royal necessities. Two important 
precedents were established, that no new taxes could be levied 
without Parliament’s consent, and that all legislation must 
receive parliamentary approval. Further, in an effort to check 
extravagance and corruption Parliament invented impeach¬ 
ment; the House of Commons constituted itself a grand jury 
of the nation, returning indictments against administrative 
officials, and in the trial which followed the House of Lords sat 
in judgment. 


528 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


We have seen that Richard's attempt to dipense with Par¬ 
liament cost him his throne, and that Henry IV was pledged to 
respect Parliament's rights and privileges. It is not strange, 
then, that important constitutional advance was made in 
Henry’s reign and following. It was established that all com¬ 
plaints must be satisfactorily answered by the administration 
before taxes would be voted, and that taxes would be voted 
on the last day of the session. Further, all financial bills must 
originate in the House of Commons. To make sure that money 
voted for certain purposes was spent for those purposes, Parlia¬ 
ment set up a committee to audit accounts. It was further 
established that members of Parliament should be free from 
arrest during the sittings and on their journey to and from 
Westminster. Freedom of debate was also established, that 
is, the right not to be called in question elsewhere for anything 
said in Parliament. The climax of constitutional advance, 
however, was a council, appointed by the king with the consent 
of Parliament, without whose consent the king should do nothing. 
This council really ruled England after the death of Henry V. 

Here is a body of parliamentary rights and privileges which 
are part of the constitution of practically every self-governing 
country in the world to-day. Many of these precedents were 
two or three centuries ahead of the times, however, even in 
England. The fifteenth century Parliament was far from rep¬ 
resenting the whole people of England. The House of Lords, 
through the dying out and intermarrying of baronial families, 
did not exceed fifty members. In the House of Commons the 
county members were controlled by the large landed pro¬ 
prietors. A statute of 1430 excluded the rural masses from the 
franchise. Thirty votes in a county election was a large number; 
frequently there were as few as ten. A Parliament which repre¬ 
sented so limited a class had no special right to rule England. 

Wars of the Roses 

How little the landed magnates of England were fit to rule 
is amply demonstrated in the Wars of the Roses, the civil wars 
of the reign of Henry VI. King of England and of France at 
the tender age of nine months, Henry grew up to be a weak and 


FIFTEENTH CENTURY FRANCE AND ENGLAND 529 


colorless man. We are told that “forsooth, forsooth” was his 
strongest epithet. At times Henry was actually insane, an 
inheritance, perhaps, from his French grandfather, Charles VI. 
But Henry’s reign was unpopular as well as weak, for the 
Hundred Years’ War was going badly. 

A much more fundamental trouble, however, was the poison¬ 
ing of English society by the long war. Nobles, clergy, and 
commons alike were demoralized. There was no respect for 
law. The great nobles maintained bands of armed followers, 
recruits being easily obtained from the thousands of fighting 
men returned from France. These hired ruffians would stop at 
nothing; it was impossible to bring them to justice. There was 
not a’judge or jury in England who dared convict them; the 
orderly processes of government were simply set aside. For 
example, two neighboring landlords of Norfolk had a dis¬ 
pute over a boundary wall. The argument was settled when 
one of them besieged the other in his castle with three thousand 
men, taking it by assault after a five weeks’ siege. 

The weakness of the king, the unpopularity of the reign, 
and the demoralization of society were the real causes of the 
Wars of the Roses; though there was, to be sure, a dispute 
over the succession, Richard, duke of York and head of the 
House of York, claiming to have a greater right to the throne 
than Henry VI of Lancaster. The Wars of the Roses or, as 
the French call them La Guerre des Deux Roses, is an histo¬ 
rian’s term. The white rose of York was heard of during the 
wars, to be sure, but the red rose of Lancaster was not heard 
of until later. War broke out in 1450 and dragged on for about 
thirty-five years, though most of the hard fighting came in 
the first ten years. The noble families of England arranged 
themselves on the side of Lancaster or York in approximately 
even numbers. Richard of York was killed in one of the early 
battles, but his son drove Henry VI with his wife and son 
forth from England and became king as Edward IV (1461- 
1483). The Lancastrians renewed the struggle but King Henry VI 
and the Prince of Wales were both killed. Edward IV’s death 
in 1483 was followed by a two-year reign of terror, which was the 
method by which his younger brother, Richard III (1483- 


530 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


1485), maintained himself. The reign of terror ended with 
Richard’s defeat and death and the rise to power of a compro¬ 
mise candidate, Henry of Richmond. 

The Strong Monarchy of the Tudors 
With the accession of Henry YII (1485) the Wars of the Roses 
ended and the modern history of England may be said to begin. 
Henry inaugurated the famous political policy of the Tudors 
known as the “strong monarchy”, based upon an alliance 
between the monarchy and the middle classes. The disorders 
of the times had made the merchants and the commons long for 
peace and security and they were willing to pay any price to 
obtain them; the merchants had practically brought the* Wars 
of the Roses to an end by refusing to grant further financial 
assistance to the Lancastrians. The Tudors were shrewd enough 
to discern the temper of the times. As the kings of France had 
done so successfully across the Channel, so the Tudor monarchy 
in England brushed aside the nobles and the clergy and itself 
assumed the leadership of the nation. 

For Further Reading 

R. Lodge, The Close of the Middle Ages, chaps. 15 and 16 
Cambridge Modern History, I, chap. 12 

E. Wingfield-Stratford, The History of British Civilization, bk. I, 

chap. 7 

J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of Europe in the Later 

Middle Ages, chap. 12 

R. A. Newhall, The English Conquest of Normandy 

K. H. Vickers, England in the Later Middle Ages, chaps. 17 to 25 
J. Ramsay, Lancaster and York, 2 vols. 

J. H. Wylie, The Reign of Henry V 

H. S. Bennett, The Pastons and their England 

James Gairdner, ed., The Pasion Letters, 6 vols. 

G. B. Adams, Growth of the French Nation 
G. W. Kitchin, History of France, vol. II 
J. Michelet, History of France, vol. II 

F. C. Lowell, Joan of Arc 

Anatole France, The Life of Joan of Arc 
Francois Villon, Poems (numerous editions) 

C. Hare, Life of Louis XI 


CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE 


THE PAPACY IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 

We have seen that the mediaeval papacy reached its height 
in the thirteenth century. Having finally disposed of the em¬ 
pire, its rival for the political leadership of Europe, the papacy’s 
position seemed secure. It was only for a moment. Papal domi¬ 
nance of the mediaeval world depended upon the continuance 
of the mediaeval world order; and a slow evolution is ever at 
work in the affairs of men. Slowly undermined in the four¬ 
teenth century, the mediaeval order collapsed in the century 
that followed. In the meantime a new order began to appear, 
which we call modern. How the papacy was affected by the 
changes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is the theme 
of this chapter. 

The Period of French Dominance 

The first ordeal of the papacy was a period of French domi¬ 
nance. We have seen that the thirteenth century Capetians 
had made of France the strongest state in Europe and the first 
nation-state of modern times. Reaching out for control over the 
French clergy the kings of France had come into conflict with 
the papacy. The contest between Philip IV and Boniface VIII 
had been sharp and decisive. The humiliation and death of 
Boniface was followed by the elevation of the archbishop of 
Bordeaux, who took the name of Clement V. 

A Frenchman himself the new pope promptly created ten 
new cardinals, of whom nine were French and several the ac¬ 
knowledged partisans of the king of France. Thus began a 
long period of French dominance of the papal office during 
which a majority of the cardinals were French and all the 
popes were of French birth. Rome, seat of the papacy from 
time immemorial, was abandoned and the French popes took 
up their residence in Avignon. The county and city of Avignon 

531 


532 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


were in the hands of the House of Anjou as counts of Provence. 
Though not directly French, therefore, Avignon was under 
French influence. The long residence of the popes at Avignon, 
approximately seventy years (1307-1376), is known as the 
“Babylonian Captivity”. 

Removal to Avignon in the first place was not a matter of 
deliberate policy. Clement V, lately archbishop of Bordeaux, 
was detained in France by the problem of the Templars, whose 
affairs were being wound up, and he settled at Avignon as a 
temporary expedient. Clement's immediate successors like¬ 
wise looked upon their stay at Avignon as strictly temporary; 
they were hoping to prevent the outbreak of hostilities between 
France and England. Once hostilities had begun the popes 
stayed on at Avignon trying to reconcile the contending parties. 
Meanwhile, and this was of more moment, factions of petty 
nobles hostile to the papacy were in command at Rome. Rome 
seemed permanently lost. To secure their position at Avignon 
the popes purchased the suzerainty of the city from the House 
of Anjou (1348), and began to build permanent quarters. The 
papal palace at Avignon still stands, a frowning fortress with¬ 
out but a sumptuous palace within. One cannot visit this im¬ 
mense pile which crowns the hill above the city without feeling 
that the popes who built it never expected to return to Rome. 

Criticism of the Papacy by the Intellectuals 

During the Avignon residence the papacy lost ground. 
Europe's greatest scholars and men of letters began to attack 
the papal claim to political leadership. The first was Dante, who 
denied that Constantine had authority to give the West to the 
pope, evidently believing that he had done so, however. Dante 
favored the revival of the empire. His book, De Monarchia, 
in which he makes these points, was written about 1313. More 
formidable than Dante in this field was Marsilius of Padua 
(1270-1342). He had studied law in his native city, and phi¬ 
losophy, theology, and medicine at Paris, where he was later 
lecturer and rector. His book, Defensor Pacis , really a text¬ 
book of political science, has been called the most important 
work of the middle ages. It was written about 1324. Marsilius 


THE PAPACY IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 533 


declared that the source of law is the people, that government 
derives its just authority from the consent of the governed, 
and that the ideal state is a body of citizens in willing subjec¬ 
tion to a government of their own choice. Applying his prin¬ 
ciples to the papacy, Marsilius attacked that institution more 
boldly than any other man of his time. Christ alone is the Head 
of the church, he declared. The church itself is made up of all 
believers, who have the right to choose their priests and to 
depose them. A council of representatives of all the faithful 
alone has authority to declare the faith of the church, which 
rests finally on the Bible, he declared. Politically Marsilius 
was an imperialist, and when his bold utterances made France 
too hot for him, he fled to Germany, where, after some years 
as court physician to the emperor, he died. Another great 
intellectual opposed to the papacy was William of Ockham, also 
a professor at Paris and a famous nominalist. William pre¬ 
sented evidence, conclusive to his way of thinking, that popes 
and even church councils had erred. Like Marsilius he held that 
all authority, even ecclesiastical, must rest on the free will of 
the people. Like Marsilius, also, William of Ockham eventually 
sought safety in Germany. 

Loss of Political Authority 
Thus did the great thinkers of the fourteenth century re¬ 
pudiate the political leadership of the papacy. What they were 
doing in the realm of theory was merely a reflection of what 
was transpiring in the world of fact. Throughout the Italian 
peninsula the various principalities were developing along lines 
that were no longer mediaeval but modern. Expansion of ter¬ 
ritory, security of frontiers, prosperity of their subjects, and 
other practical interests were now the sole concern of Italian 
princes, nobles, and budding tyrants. Vague claims to over¬ 
lordship by pope or emperor concerned them not at all. In 
France savants at the court of Charles V were developing a 
science of government in which the crown was the center and 
source of all authority. So far were they from accepting papal 
leadership that almost the reverse was true. In England where 
a monarchy under the control of Parliament ruled the nation 


534 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


papal claims were repudiated item by item, as we have seen. 
The first enactment of the Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire 
as well as the final refusal of feudal dues came in the period of 
the Avignon residence. Thus were the principalities and powers 
of Europe escaping from their mediaeval bonds, in the four¬ 
teenth century, and a more modern Europe was shadowed forth. 
It is noteworthy that no Crusade was launched in this century, 
despite the most strenuous efforts of successive popes. Even 
in such a time-honored enterprise papal leadership failed. 

Papal Taxation and Finance 

One result of the Avignon residence, then, was the loss by 
the papacy of some measure of its political authority in western 
Europe. But the papacy lost authority in other realms also. 
The Avignon residence made much new taxation necessary. It 
proved impossible to collect the revenues due from the Italian 
estates of the papacy. Furthermore, Avignon did not draw a 
steady stream of pilgrims, as Rome had done. The fourteenth 
century witnessed a considerable rise in the cost of living, also, 
and this was intensified by the long war between France and 
England. It might be thought that the papal court at Avignon 
could have accommodated itself to its lessened income, but 
there seems to have been no move in that direction. The papal 
administration was organized more elaborately than ever be¬ 
fore, with hosts of new officials. Most of the cardinals built 
splendid quarters for themselves at Avignon and lived on a 
scale of magnificence not known before. 

To meet the situation the Avignon popes devised a new system 
of taxation. Every papal appointee was obliged to pay into the 
papal treasury a proportion, usually one-half, of the revenues 
of his benefice. This was called “annates”. The papal power 
of appointment was greatly extended, also, and it came to 
include appointment in advance to future vacancies. Another 
new source of revenue was from “vacancies”. During a va¬ 
cancy all the revenue from a benefice was to go to the pope. A 
benefice was deemed vacant when it was in dispute and a dis¬ 
pute might drag on at the papal curia for years. Again, there 
were service charges which every papal appointee must pay. 


THE PAPACY IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 535 


These fees might seem inconsequential but we are informed 
that they totaled at least one-half of the whole papal revenue. 
Finally, a direct tax of one-tenth of the total net revenue of 
all benefices was levied from time to time. Originally levied 
only in time of grave emergency such as a Crusade, custom and 
necessity led to the frequent use of the direct tax in ordinary 
times. When a direct tax was deemed inexpedient the clergy 
were asked to make gifts to the papal treasury. The sums to 
be given were specified and a threat of excommunication was 
added in case of failure to comply, so that we may fairly assume 
that “gift” differed from “tax” only in name. 

Popular Criticism of the Church 

Of course the clergy could and did pass most of their burdens 
along to the general public. Religious opinion in Europe was 
gravely disturbed by the rapacity of the papal tax collectors. 
Popular discontent was voiced in the songs of the troubadours 
and the minnesingers. It was expressed also in the popular 
literature of the century. The “Decameron” of Boccaccio (1313— 
1375) and “The Canterbury Tales” of Geoffrey Chaucer (1340- 
1400) are full of anti-clerical feeling. A measure of the loss of 
religious enthusiasm is found in the lessened number of new 
monasteries. In France but 53 monasteries were founded in the 
fourteenth century, as compared with 287 in the thirteenth and 
702 in the twelfth. Among the Franciscans a movement was set 
on foot to restore the church to the path of apostolic poverty 
and primitive simplicity. The General of the order was him¬ 
self converted to the new view, and William of Ockham was 
one of his staunchest supporters within the order. Both finally 
fled from Avignon when it became apparent that their cause 
was lost and that they were under suspicion of heresy. 
William of Ockham put the view of the Spiritual Franciscans, 
as they were called, as follows: “Jesus had a crown of thorns, 
not a diadem of precious stones. His reign was spiritual, not 
temporal. All teaching to the contrary is heretical and blas¬ 
phemous.” And William went on to say that by these 
tests the pope of the moment, John XXII, was a manifest 
heretic. 


536 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


We should be greatly mistaken, however, were we to suppose 
that because the church was in disfavor the people were spir¬ 
itually dead. On the contrary there is much evidence of reli¬ 
gious feeling among the common people during this very period. 
Associations like the “Friends of God” and the “Brethren of 
the Common Lot” attest this. So also do the number and the 
popularity of religious mystics. It is not surprising that some 
souls were greatly grieved by the long absence of the papal 
court from its divinely appointed seat at Rome. Two saintly 
women, St. Catharine of Siena (1346-1380) and St. Brigitta 
of Sweden (1303-1373), visited the pope at Avignon seeking 
to bring about the return to Rome. St. Catharine labored for 
years to that end, proclaiming that the return to Rome would 
bring peace to Italy. 

The Papacy Returns to Rome 

Political considerations kept the popes at Avignon and politi¬ 
cal considerations determined their return. The Roman populace 
had long besought the popes to come back. The “business 
depression” resulting from the continued absence of the papal 
court accounts for the attitude of the Roman citizens in some 
measure. About the middle of the century a Roman citizen 
of humble birth but of magnetic presence and great eloquence 
visited Avignon as a member of a delegation of Roman citizens 
supplicating the pope’s return. The pope was so far moved as 
to appoint this patriot, Cola di Rienzi, his agent to organize 
the Roman populace and drive the nobles out. Strange to 
say Rienzi succeeded. But success turned his head. He con¬ 
ceived a vast and vague design of restoring the Roman Repub¬ 
lic. After many changes of fortune Rienzi finally met death 
at the hands of the very mob he had once controlled. This was 
in 1354. The papacy profited by Rienzi’s victories over the 
nobles, however, and Cardinal Albornoz, a Spaniard of great 
military ability, gradually recovered the papal estates and thus 
made a return to Rome possible. 

In the meantime the security of the popes was being threat¬ 
ened at Avignon itself. The Peace of Bretigny (1360) had 
thrown hundreds of fighting men out of employment and they 


THE PAPACY IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 537 


organized themselves into “free companies”, as we have seen. 
So menacing were they that Avignon was no longer secure; 
the pope was several times obliged to buy them off, and at 
increasingly higher prices. In 1376 Pope Gregory XI returned 
to Rome and the “Babylonian Captivity” was over. 

Outbreak of the Schism 

Two years later Gregory XI died. The College of Cardinals 
was made up of eleven Frenchmen, four Italians, and one 
Spaniard. The French cardinals had opposed the return to 
Rome and only a few of them were present when the pope died. 
The Roman mob, wild with fear lest another Frenchman be 
chosen pope and leave Rome once more, practically held the 
cardinals prisoners, demanding that they elect a Roman, or 
at least an Italian. Torn between fear of the mob and concern 
for the wishes of absent colleagues, the cardinals present in 
conclave cast their ballots for the archbishop of Bari, an Italian, 
who took the name of Urban VI (1378-1389). 

The new pope was renowned for his strict and monkish piety, 
but to the amazement of his electors he at once assumed a 
domineering attitude, proposing to “rescue” the papacy from 
French control by the creation of twenty-eight new cardinals. 
Reenforced by their French colleagues, the cardinals met again 
outside Rome, repudiated their election of Urban VI on the 
ground of constraint from the mob, and elected Robert of 
Geneva, a man of high birth and great influence, of French 
speech but not of French birth. Robert assumed the name of 
Clement VII, and took up his residence at Avignon. The same 
body had now elected two popes; the papacy had not yet been 
able to throw off French influence; and the ordeal of the papacy 
in the “Babylonian Captivity” was to be continued in the 
“Great Schism”! 

The consternation of the faithful in this unfortunate situa¬ 
tion can easily be imagined. Which was the true pope? The 
salvation of the soul itself hung on the answer. Half Europe 
followed one pope and half the other, yet only one was the 
Vicar of Christ, source of that divine grace which each human 
soul so desperately needed. A priest who followed the antipope 


538 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


could not perform a true marriage. Were one’s children then 
bastards? The same terrible doubts presented themselves with 
respect to baptism, confirmation, extreme unction, and so on. 
Many of the great international religious orders, such as the 
Franciscans, the Hospitalers, the Carthusians, and others, were 
rent in twain. France, of course, supported Clement VII; and 
in this she was supported by her ally Scotland, by the king¬ 
dom of Naples, where the French House of Anjou held sway, 
and by Spain. Urban VI retained the allegiance of Italy, save 
Naples, of Germany, and of England. 

The Spread of Heresy 

The church’s extremity was the heretic’s opportunity, and 
heresy during the Great Schism was more widespread and more 
defiant than ever before. Old heresies took on a new lease of 
life. The most popular of these was the Waldensian, the spread 
of which now became rapid. Thousands joined the sect in the 
Low Countries, and in Bavaria, Suabia, Saxony, Prussia, 
Poland, Bohemia, Austria, and Hungary. Recruits came from 
the workers and peasants exclusively; indeed, the gentleman 
class, whose profession was arms, was expressly excluded from 
the denomination. Bohemia was an especially important cen¬ 
ter, whence missionaries, trained in the Scriptures, made their 
way throughout the West. 

Much more formidable than the Waldensian heresy, however, 
were the movements led by Wyclif and by Huss. Wyclif was 
a Yorkshire man, born about 1320. Going to Oxford as a lad 
Wyclif became the greatest scholar in the University, and he 
remained at Oxford nearly all his life, becoming the Head of 
Balliol College. As a patriotic Englishman Wyclif attacked 
the French dominance of the papacy, becoming the acknowl¬ 
edged spokesman for the “patriotic” school of thought in 
England. He was probably a member of the Parliament of 
1366 which refused to pay the arrears of feudal dues to the 
pope. 

With the outbreak of the Schism Wyclif was led to a critical 
examination of the whole foundation of the mediaeval church. 
He published his findings in a series of writings which had a 


THE PAPACY IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 539 


wide currency both in England and upon the Continent. It 
would take too long even to summarize Wyclif s views. It is 
sufficient to say that he anticipated nearly every view held 
by Luther a century and a half later. Wyclif denied the dogma 
of transubstantiation. He rejected the authority of the pope 
utterly, affirming the right of private judgment based upon the 
Scriptures. With a few colleagues Wyclif undertook to trans¬ 
late the whole of the Bible into English, in order to make that 
great source of religious truth available to the common people. 
Asserting that the priests and the friars had neglected to in¬ 
struct the people, Wyclif organized a group of poor preachers, 
some of them laymen, and sent them out to preach and to 
teach. Economic discontent had made the soil of England 
only too fertile for Wyclif’s revolutionary doctrines and they 
were given a social meaning he did not intend. The Peasants’ 
Revolt flamed up in 1381 and Wyclifism fell into disfavor in 
high places. Wyclif himself died in 1384 before the reaction 
against his teaching had gone very far. 

Even more dangerous than the heretics of England were 
the heretics of Bohemia. The Bohemians were Slavs but they 
had long been subject to colonization from Germany. German 
landlords had established themselves in the countryside and 
German merchants were in control of the trade and of the 
industries of the towns. The official Catholic church in Bohemia 
had long been controlled by these German invaders, and con¬ 
sequently the Bohemians were ripe for heresy. In the course of 
the fourteenth century several native leaders had established 
heresies among the Bohemians, and the Waldensians had made 
great inroads among the common people, as we have seen. 
What was needed, however, if the heretical movements were 
ever to capture the whole people, was leadership of a high order, 
and this was secured in the persons of John Huss and Jerome 
of Prague. 

Huss was born in 1369, and going to Prague and working 
his way through college, became a leader in the world of schol¬ 
arship at the University. He specialized in theology and greatly 
excelled in the debates of the day. The University was seething 
with heretical ideas and Huss was stirred by them. He was 


540 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


ordained a priest in 1400, and securing a parish began to preach. 
Jerome of Prague was of noble birth, but turning to the life 
of the scholar made the rounds of the German universities and 
then went to Paris. Jerome was as bold and confident as Huss 
was humble and moderate. Eagerly embracing the new teach¬ 
ings, Jerome advocated them with such lack of restraint that 
the authorities at Paris expelled him from the University. 
Jerome then went to Oxford, to study Wyclifism at the source. 
For some years the Bohemian radicals had been in touch with 
Wyclif s teachings, contact having been established when Anne 
of Bohemia was married to Richard II of England. In 1402 
Jerome returned to Prague with copies of all of Wyclif’s hereti¬ 
cal writings. These Huss, Jerome, and their associates began 
to study with the greatest eagerness. The result was the launch¬ 
ing of a heretical movement which quickly spread through all 
Bohemia, and seemed destined to go much farther. 

The Conciliar Movement 

It was evident that should the Schism be indefinitely pro¬ 
longed irretrievable disaster might overwhelm the church. 
Yet who could or should lead the way out? In the early middle 
ages when the church was in difficulties the emperors had usually 
intervened, in the name of all Christian people. Those days 
were gone forever. Moreover, the church was powerless to help 
itself when the papal office was in schism, for the pope had 
triumphed over all other ecclesiastical authorities, establishing 
an absolute monarchy. For a time all Europe was at a loss. 

Gradually a plan was devised for rescuing the church, known 
as the Conciliar movement. Briefly, this movement aimed to 
transform the papacy from an absolute monarchy into a limited 
monarchy by setting up a representative council in the church 
with legislative powers. There had been general councils in 
the early church with powers similar to those of the body now 
proposed. The later councils, however, like all other ecclesias¬ 
tical institutions, were dominated by the popes, who alone 
could summon them. The Conciliar movement of the fourteenth 
century found its chief support in the universities of Europe, 
and especially among the great doctors of the University of 


THE PAPACY IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 541 


Paris. We have seen that Marsilius of Padua and William of 
Ockham taught that the church, like all other institutions, was 
merely the whole of the individuals who composed it. Final 
authority in the church, therefore, rested with the priests and 
the laity. This, it need hardly be pointed out, was an expres¬ 
sion of the old nominalist viewpoint, which had been defeated 
but not destroyed. That the Conciliar idea was a favorite with 
the French doctors had a significance that should not escape 
our notice. To their way of thinking, the papacy should not 
only be reorganized as a limited monarchy; it should be de¬ 
centralized as well. That is, the Christian clergy and people 
of each nation should constitute a church in some degree au¬ 
tonomous, though freely associated with other national churches 
in a confederation. This doctrine was very pleasing to the French 
kings. During the Schism they summoned councils of the French 
clergy which took over practically all the prerogatives of the 
papacy. 

As the Schism dragged on, in the later decades of the four¬ 
teenth century, the Conciliar idea found more and more advo¬ 
cates. The two great leaders of the movement were Peter d’Ailly 
and John Gerson, famous doctors of the University of Paris. 
Only a General Council, it was argued, could deal with the 
great and pressing problems of healing the Schism, of stamping 
out heresy, and, finally, of reforming the church, “head and 
members”, as the phrase was. Most thinking people agreed 
that a Council should be called. But who should issue the call? 
Neither of the rival popes would do so. Indeed, successive 
popes at Rome and at Avignon through thirty years had dis¬ 
played an absolutely uncompromising and implacable tem¬ 
per. So much so, indeed, that at last the cardinals attached to 
each court were persuaded to make common cause against their 
leaders and to take the initiative. 

The cardinals summoned a General Council to meet at Pisa 
in 1407. Archbishops, bishops, abbots, university doctors, and 
the personal representatives of the crowned heads of England, 
France, Germany, Poland, and Sicily were present. The Roman 
pope and his Avignon rival, both having refused to submit, 
were placed on trial charged with obstinacy and bad faith, 


542 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


with the charges of heresy, sorcery, and cruelty thrown in for 
good measure in the mediaeval fashion. Both were deposed and, 
to avoid national jealousies, a Greek of Italian training was 
elected pope. He took the name of Alexander V. Since neither 
the Roman pope nor his Avignon rival paid any attention to 
the pronouncements of the Council of Pisa there were now 
three potentates, each claiming to be the true and the sole 
Vicar of Christ. 


The Council of Constance 

The failure of the Council of Pisa did not discourage the ad¬ 
vocates of the Conciliar idea. Rather, it strengthened their 
will, for the situation was worse than before. Enlightened 
opinion in Europe now found a leader in the emperor Sigis- 
mund. A “good European” himself, Sigismund undertook to 
persuade all of like mind that another Council must be held. 
Through his efforts there met at Constance, in 1414, represent¬ 
ative clergy and laity from nearly every country in Europe. 
We shall do well to recognize in the Council of Constance, 
and in the various Councils that followed, something new 
in the history of Europe. These Councils were really the 
first of the international congresses of modern times. The 
delegates of each “nation”, German, French, Italian, Spanish, 
English, deliberated separately and then voted in the plenary 
session of the Council en bloc. Of course not all these peoples 
had attained in those days the political solidarity they now 
possess, but it was recognized thus early that the problems of 
Europe as a whole could be solved only by the concerted ac¬ 
tion of the nations of which Europe was composed. Thus the 
political leadership of the papacy, and still more that of the 
empire, passed into history. 

The great international problems which confronted the 
Council of Constance were three. First, end the Schism and so 
restore the unity of the church. Secondly, stamp out heresy. 
Third, reform the church, head and members. The Council 
first took up the problem of ending the Schism. The three 
rivals were persuaded to resign, though not without great 
difficulty; their resignations were finally forced by the simple 


THE PAPACY IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 543 


expedient of persuading all the states of Europe to withdraw 
their support. Thirty representatives of the “nations” then 
sat with the twenty-three cardinals to elect a new pope. Their 
choice fell on Odon Colonna, member of a famous Roman family, 
who had managed to hold himself aloof from controversy. The 
election was made unanimous. The new pope took the name 
of Martin V, and the Schism was over. To be sure, feeble at¬ 
tempts were made to keep the Schism alive, and the last of 
the antipopes kept up the fight until he died in 1451. 

The Council next turned its attention to the Bohemian here¬ 
tics. John Huss and Jerome of Prague were invited to come 
to Constance under a safe conduct. After a hearing in which 
they declined to recede from any of their heretical positions 
both were condemned to death and burned in a field outside 
the walls of the city. Both men met their end with heroic 
serenity. The martyrdom of these brave and sincere men merely 
fired their co-religionists in Bohemia to greater zeal and made 
them much more dangerous to the church than before. 

The Council then turned to its third problem. The dele¬ 
gates of each “nation” were invited to draw up a list of re¬ 
forms which they thought should be undertaken. These lists 
were at one in condemning the intolerable taxation of the 
clergy and the abuse of too frequent appeals to Rome. In 
other matters, however, there was grave disagreement. There 
were those who wished to set up the General Council as a per¬ 
manent check on papal authority, and there were those, chiefly 
in the Italian delegation, who wished the papal prerogatives 
to remain exactly as they were. A third group considered that 
the discussion of whether the pope’s authority should be limited 
or unlimited was beside the point. What was vitally needed 
was a thoroughgoing reformation of the church and the clergy 
to the end that a return might be made to Biblical simplicity 
of doctrine, of ceremony, and of living. Bitter and acrimonious 
debate ensued, and it continued long. Of course no pope, believ¬ 
ing himself to be the divinely appointed Vicar of Christ, could 
fail to view with dismay proposals to lessen his authority. 
Martin V saw in the division of opinion his opportunity. Play¬ 
ing off one group against another, he wore the delegates out with 


544 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


delay. The Council finally adjourned, in 1418, with no single re¬ 
form achieved, but with the pope’s promise that another Council 
would be called in five years’ time, as the first of a regular series. 

The Council of Constance had adjourned and the papal 
prerogatives were undiminished, but the menace of future 
Councils still remained, and such was the strength of the Con¬ 
ciliar idea in Europe that the pope was not allowed to forget 
his promise. Accordingly, but most reluctantly, he summoned 
a Council at Pavia, in 1423. But the war between England and 
France was on again in full fury and the group assembled at 
Pavia proved to be both small and unrepresentative. The Coun¬ 
cil was accordingly dissolved. The adherents of the Council 
movement were bitterly disappointed but they set to work en¬ 
ergetically to secure the summoning of another Council. 

Later Councils 

Help came from an unexpected quarter. The religious wars 
in Bohemia had reached a crisis. The revolt which flamed up 
after the death of Huss had proved highly dangerous. Pope 
and emperor joined hands against the Hussites, the emperor 
in his capacity of feudal overlord of Bohemia, however, not 
as “defender of the faith”. Four crusades were launched 
against the heretics, but without success. More fortunate 
than the ill-fated Albigensians, the Hussites then carried the 
war against the enemy, invading Hungary, Austria, and other 
states of Germany. There was much popular sympathy for them 
in those lands, especially among the numerous Waldensians; in¬ 
deed, it was dissension from within, not opposition from without, 
that finally set bounds to the Hussite advance. It was all too 
apparent that the movement could not be crushed and that a 
compromise with the Bohemian church was necessary. Adherents 
of the Council idea were for compromise, which the pope opposed. 

The Bohemian crisis continued and the adherents of the 
Council won their point. The pope issued a call for a Council 
at Basel, in 1432. The attendance of delegates was adequate 
and representative. The pope shrewdly declined to be present, 
but he deputed one of the cardinals to preside, investing him 
with full powers. The principal problem, of course, was that 


THE PAPACY IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES 545 


of compromise with the Hussites. Debate was long and bitter. 
Representative Hussites were invited to be present and state 
their case, and they came, Bible in hand, ready to argue all day. 
We need not enter into the technical matters under consid¬ 
eration. It is sufficient to say that concessions were made. The 
Hussites were permitted to emphasize the apostolic poverty of the 
clergy and the free preaching of the Gospels. For the first time 
in the history of the church a compromise had been reached 
with rebels against whom a crusade had been formally 
launched. The Hussite business had proved so bothersome, how¬ 
ever, dragging on through four years, that the Council of Basel 
never got to the “ reform ” items. The weary delegates went home. 
The pope’s prerogatives were undiminished. The one achieve¬ 
ment of the Council, that of compromise with the Hussites, the 
pope proceeded to undermine by repudiating some of its terms. 

Results of the Conciliar Movement 

After Basel the Conciliar movement died out. No more councils 
were summoned. What were the results of the movement? As 
an attempt to change the fundamental character of the papacy 
we must write down failure; the pope still ruled the church 
unchecked by any rival ecclesiastical institution or authority. 
As to the other proposals for reform so ardently preached by 
the adherents of the movement, they remained unenacted. 

Though the papacy had triumphed over its rivals within 
the church, however, it had definitely lost ground outside. The 
new nations of Europe had won a more definite recognition of 
their status as units in the papal system. The organisation of 
the Councils themselves was along “national” lines, as we have 
seen. Further, it was established that among the cardinals 
there should be included henceforth representatives of all na¬ 
tions. And the stronger states began to force even greater 
concessions. In 1438 the French crown was given complete 
control over the church in France except where questions of 
faith and doctrine were concerned. (The Pragmatic Sanction of 
Bourges.) The Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, 
received similar authority over the church within their domin¬ 
ions. Even in Germany, weak politically as she was, papal 


546 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


prerogative was openly flouted. In the Golden Bull of 1356 
whereby the election of German king and emperor was regulated 
for the future, no reference was made to the pope. Thus was 
begun that disintegration of the papal authority along national 
lines of which the Protestant Reformation was a continuation. 

The age of the Councils paved the way for the Protestant 
Reformation in another way. Men had been taught to dis¬ 
tinguish between the organized church and the Christian reli¬ 
gion. Thousands had come to feel that they could be good Chris¬ 
tians and yet criticize the church for its oppressive taxation, its 
corruption, and its Schism. From such criticism it is only a 
step to the position that one may be a good Christian and repu¬ 
diate the mediaeval church entirely, which was essentially the 
Protestant viewpoint. For over a century after the Avignon resi¬ 
dence had begun no great thinker and writer defended the papacy. 
The leaders of European thought subjected the whole ecclesiasti¬ 
cal system to a raking fire of criticism, not sparing its dogmas 
or its head. Thus a vast literature of criticism was accumulated, 
upon which the leaders of the Protestant revolt freely drew. 

For Further Reading 
Cambridge Modern History, I, chaps. 18 and 19 

J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of Europe in the Later 
Middle Ages, chap. 11 

A. L. Smith, Church and State in the Middle Ages 
H. B. Workman, Dawn of the Reformation 
James Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire 
M. Creighton, A History of the Papacy, vols. I to V 
L. Pastor, History of the Popes, vols. I to IV 

F. Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome, vols. VI and VII 

G. M. Trevelyan, England in the Age of Wycliffe 

James Gairdner, Lollardry and the Reformation in England 
D. S. Muzzey, The Spiritual Franciscans 

D. S. Schaff, John Huss 

F. Lutzow, The Life and Times of John Huss 

E. G. Gardner, Saint Catharine of Siena 

E. Emerton, The 1 Defensor Pads’ of Marsiglio of Padua 
J. H. Wylie, The Council of Constance 
E. J. Kitts, In the Age of the Councils 
























































































































































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CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO 


GERMANY IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES. THE 
RISE OF THE SLAV STATES 

The death of Conrad IV, son of Frederick II, in 1254, marks 
the end of the “old empire”. The dream of world dominion 
which obsessed the Hohenstaufens was shattered by the im¬ 
pact of hard facts. The “new empire” of the later middle 
ages was in much closer touch with reality. Newly elected 
“kings of the Romans” still went to Italy, if the opportunity 
served, receiving the iron crown of the Lombards from the 
archbishop of Milan and the imperial crown from the pope at 
Rome. But these later emperors quickly retired to Germany. 
They no longer hoped to play a decisive role in Italian politics, 
nor indeed in the politics of any country save Germany. 

Nature of the “New Empire” 

And what was the Germany of the later middle ages? She 
was “an amorphous heterogeneity of microscopic particles”, 
an “ensemble of which the parts did not make a whole”. We 
have seen something of the feudal disintegration which had 
brought Germany to this unhappy state; the Hohenstaufen 
emperors had sacrificed authority in Germany on the altar 
of Italian policy. A German emperor no longer had the power 
to tax, without which no sort of governing authority may be 
maintained. The emperors of the later middle ages rarely at¬ 
tempted to lord it over their fellow German princes, but devoted 
themselves to increasing the private possessions of their house, 
freely using the remaining prerogatives and prestige of the 
imperial office to that end. 

Feudal disintegration meant not only the steady waning of 
central authority but also the constant multiplication of states. 
The old duchies had disappeared long since and swarms of petty 
barons fought over the fragments. Each noble family sought 

547 


548 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


to root itself in the soil, be its holding only a few square miles 
in extent. Constant subdivision into smaller and smaller prin¬ 
cipalities was due in part to the unfortunate custom of equal 
division among the male heirs, each son being invested with 
his father’s title. The estates of the German bishops and abbots 
were not subject to such subdivision, of course, and since the 
ecclesiastical princes were no less zealous expansionists than 
the lay princes the ecclesiastical states of Germany became 
increasingly important. Besides princes of the church and lay 
barons there was an increasing number of “free” cities in the 
empire, cities which had won the right of self-government. All 
in all, there were more than three hundred “particles” in Ger¬ 
many by the close of the middle ages. 

A form of unity was maintained in an Imperial Diet, an 
assembly of all the princes with representatives from the free 
cities. This body sat in three houses. The first was composed 
of the greater princes, ecclesiastical and lay, who elected the 
emperor; the second, of the lesser princes; and the third, of dele¬ 
gates from the free cities. The Diet met infrequently. It had no 
authority save as its members might give it, and any decision 
of the Diet, to be of effect, had to be practically unanimous. 

Rise of the Hapsburgs 

For twenty years after the death of Conrad IV foreigners 
contended for the gilded honor of empire. Richard of Cornwall, 
second son of the English king, and Alphonse X of Castile 
were both elected to the high office; the princes accepted bribes 
from both sides and one elector, illegally but loyally, cast a vote 
for each candidate. This comedy ended, however, with the 
election of the German prince Rudolph of Hapsburg (1273- 
1291). This is the first we hear of the famous family whose 
fortune finally failed in recent years. Rudolph was one of the 
smaller princes and he owed his election to that fact, as well as 
to the tacit understanding that he would be a “good” emperor, 
not troubling the princes in Germany nor fighting windmills 
in Italy. 

The luck of the Hapsburgs is notorious, and it began with 
Rudolph. His original principality was a bit of the old duchy 


GERMANY AND THE SLAV STATES 


549 


of Suabia. The king of Bohemia, Ottocar II, who had built 
up an extensive “empire” of Slavic and Germanic lands, was 
killed in battle (1278) and his holdings were dispersed. Rudolph, 
enjoying, as emperor, the old feudal rights of escheat and for¬ 
feiture, skillfully gathered in some of the fragments. The duchy 
of Austria, with Styria and Carinthia, came to Rudolf himself, 
and his son Albert became king of Bohemia for a time. Thus 
the Hapsburgs came into the possession of a considerable do¬ 
main, stretching from the Rhine to the Adriatic. Austria became 
the seat of the Hapsburgs, and it remained in their hands until 
1919. Hapsburg power had expanded too rapidly, however, and 
a century of slower progress ensued. Bohemia was lost; the 
princes of Germany bestowed their suffrage elsewhere; and 
the long drawn out struggle with the Swiss cantons occupied 
the Hapsburgs throughout the fourteenth century. 

From the too powerful Hapsburgs the princes turned to 
Henry of Luxembourg (Henry VII, 1308-1313). Henrys’ 
private fief was a county, small and poor, in the Ardennes. For¬ 
tune favored him and his house, however. His son John, through 
his marriage to the heiress of the national Czech dynasty, be¬ 
came king of Bohemia, and his grandson secured Brandenburg. 
These two great fiefs, with their dependencies, gave the Luxem- 
bourgs a compact holding reaching from the Danube nearly to 
the shores of the Baltic. The House of Luxembourg reached 
its height under Charles IV. Bohemia was its seat and Charles 
of Luxembourg was especially devoted to the Bohemians, es¬ 
tablishing a separate archbishopric for them and founding at 
Prague a national university. In 1347 King Charles of Bohemia 
was chosen emperor (1347-1378). As emperor his fame rests 
chiefly upon that remarkable document the Golden Bull. 

The Golden Bull 

The Golden Bull (1356), so-called from the gold capsule 
with which the seal of the document was enclosed, is the mediae¬ 
val empire’s constitution. Statesmanship of a high order must 
underlie its provisions, for this constitution lasted without 
amendment until the empire itself came to an end just four 
hundred and fifty years later. There were provisions, first, 


550 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


for the election of the emperor. The ancient tribal custom of 
election of the king by the German people had early given way 
to election by the princes. As time went on and the number 
of princes increased to a swarm it was established that only 
the greater princes could vote. But who were the greater princes? 
And in a given princely house, who was the head? Doubt on 
these and other points had led to much confusion and to dis¬ 
puted elections. The Golden Bull provided that elections should 
be held at Frankfort and within three months after the death 
of an emperor. Seven princes were given the right to vote, 
namely, the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves, the 
king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Bran¬ 
denburg, and the count palatine of the Rhine. The archbishop 
of Mainz was invested with the functions of secretary of the 
group. Election was to be by majority vote, each elector hav¬ 
ing the right to vote for himself if he so desired. No provision 
was made for consultation with the pope at any stage of the 
electoral process. 

The Seven Electors were given the highest princely rank. 
The four lay fiefs were never to be subdivided, and succession 
was to be by primogeniture in the male line. Special prerogatives 
were conferred upon the Seven Electors, such as the royal right 
of coinage and of final jurisdiction without appeal. The Golden 
Bull has been much criticized because of these latter provisions. 
“It legalized anarchy and called it a constitution”, says Bryce. 
This is too harsh a judgment. The Golden Bull saved the em¬ 
pire from complete annihilation. Weak though the empire was, 
provision was here made for its indefinite perpetuation. 

The House of Luxembourg maintained its hold on the im¬ 
perial office until 1437; with Bohemia and Brandenburg 
the head of the family had two votes to start with, and so 
needed but two more. Charles IV’s son Wenzel (1378-1400) 
was a man of little force under whom things fell to pieces. His 
Bohemian subjects revolted and made him their prisoner. 
Wenzel was then “deposed”, and a split among the electors 
produced a schism. The Great Schism in the church was on 
at the time and there were actually three rival “emperors”, in 
1410, to match the three rival “popes”. The imperial schism 


GERMANY AND THE SLAV STATES 


551 


was healed with the election of Sigismund (1410-1437), a 
brother of Wenzel. Perhaps it was Sigismund’s personal ex¬ 
perience which led him to devote his considerable ability to 
healing the papal schism, which is his chief title to fame. The 
long drawn out Hussite wars which followed the Council of 
Constance sapped the strength of the House of Luxembourg, 
and on the death of Sigismund all his remaining possessions, 
including Bohemia, passed to the House of Hapsburg. 

The electors now turned once again to the House of Haps¬ 
burg, and their choice fell upon Frederick, duke of Styria 
(Frederick III, 1440-1492). Frederick was remarkable only 
for his mediocrity. He was not the head of the House of Haps¬ 
burg and he was treated by the other members of the family 
as a poor relation. It was two years after his election as king 
of the Romans before he took the trouble to go to Aachen to 
be crowned; and during the greater part of his long reign he 
did not even attend the Diets. Curiously enough, however, 
Frederick III went to Rome to receive the imperial crown from 
the pope. Eugenius IV was struggling for the mastery with 
the adherents of the Council of Basel, chiefly German bishops, 
and he offered to crown Frederick at Rome and give him 100,- 
000 florins for the expenses of the journey if he would come 
out in opposition to the German clergy. Frederick accepted. 
In 1452, accordingly, the pathetic king of the Romans, without 
a following, traversed the long road to Rome and, kneeling 
before the pope, received the imperial crown. Thus did the 
third Frederick make a laughingstock of a name which had 
once been the greatest in Europe. He was the last German king 
ever to go to Rome for a crown. 

Hapsburg Holdings at the Close of the Middle 
Ages 

The end of Frederick's reign made up for the drabness of its 
earlier years. The emperor secured for his son Maximilian 
the hand of Europe’s greatest heiress, Mary of Burgundy, who 
brought as her dowry, in 1477, the Burgundies and the Nether¬ 
lands. A few years later, and while his father was still living, 
Maximilian was elected king of the Romans. Thus was inaugu- 


552 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


rated a succession of Hapsburgs as king-emperors of Germany 
which was to continue unbroken so long as the empire endured. 
Philip, son of Maximilian and Mary, espoused Joanna, heiress 
of Spain. Their son was Charles V who, as emperor and head 
of the Hapsburg “combine”, with its vast holdings in Europe 
and in the New World, became the greatest political figure since 
Charlemagne. 


Origin of Switzerland 

A notable feature of German history in the later middle 
ages was the rise of Switzerland. During the first half of the 
thirteenth century the St. Gotthard route between Italy and 
Germany came into much fuller use than theretofore. It is 
much the shortest way across the Alps. In the pass of the St. 
Gotthard lived isolated communities of peasants, whose sole 
living was cattle-raising. The better to secure the highway 
between Italy and Germany the emperor Frederick II organized 
two of these peasant communities, Uri and Schwyz, into self- 
governing cantons with the emperor himself as immediate over- 
lord. The rise of the House of Hapsburg, half a century later, 
threatened the freedom of the two cantons, for Uri and Schwyz 
had formed part of the defunct duchy of Suabia which the 
Hapsburgs were endeavoring to reunite. In 1291 Uri and Schwyz 
with a neighboring community called Unterwalden joined in 
a “Perpetual Compact” to resist the Hapsburgs. Without 
sacrificing any of their powers of local self-government the 
three cantons pledged mutual cooperation in “foreign affairs”. 
This Compact is the germ of modern Switzerland, the oldest 
republic in the world and the best governed. 

The heroic struggle of the Swiss peasants against Hapsburg 
aggression is a romance in itself. It could well dispense with 
the embellishment of a legendary William Tell, but the Tell 
legend has this much truth in it at least—the heroic qualities 
attributed to the national hero were the actual qualities of the 
Swiss people. As emperors the Hapsburgs were the overlords of 
the cantons. The precise issue, then, was the attempt of the 
Hapsburgs to retain their overlordship of the cantons after 
they had lost the imperial office. This the Swiss resisted. They 


GERMANY AND THE SLAV STATES 


553 


fought for the status of “immediate dependence upon the 
Empire” (Reichsunmittelbarkeit). Henry VII, head of the rival 
House of Luxembourg, readily gave the cantons the recognition 
they desired, but this action the Hapsburgs ignored. In 1315 
Duke Leopold of Austria invaded the cantons at the head of his 
knights. He was disastrously defeated by the sturdy peasants 
in the battle of Morgarten, barely escaping with his life. The 
truce which followed gave the Swiss a long breathing spell. 
Neighboring towns, bound to the free cantons by economic 
interests, now joined them in political union. Lucerne, in 1332, 
Zurich, in 1351, Glarus and Zug, in 1352, and Berne, in 1353, 
became members of the “confederation”, each retaining its 
own local institutions but agreeing to cooperate with the other 
cantons in defense. Imperial recognition of the league of eight 
cantons was granted by Charles IV, but in 1386 Austria again 
attacked in full strength in the battle of Sempach. The Aus¬ 
trians were again completely defeated and their duke himself 
lay dead on the field. 

It is noteworthy that like the English yeomen of the same 
period the Swiss peasants had developed a weapon with which 
the armed knight could not cope. The long bow of the English 
was matched by the pike of the Swiss. Formed in a hollow 
square with pikes projecting horizontally on every side the 
Swiss foot soldiers had no need to fear the charge of armored 
knights. The long bow was never successfully used except by 
the British but the Swiss pike became a standard weapon of 
all Europe until the eighteenth century, when an improved 
musket and the device of the bayonet made it obsolete. 

The Swiss Confederation 

Swiss expansion continued through the fifteenth century. 
Almost as by instinct the confederated cantons sought to ex¬ 
tend and fortify their hold on the St. Gotthard pass. To this 
end the Italian slopes of the Alps were needed and these the 
Swiss gradually acquired, at the expense of the dukes of Milan. 
A nibbling process went on against Austria, also, to the east 
and north. To the west the Swiss were not so successful. In¬ 
deed, the very existence of the Confederation was in jeopardy 


554 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


for some years while Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, 
was endeavoring to round out a “middle kingdom” by adding 
the Swiss cantons to the Burgundies and the Netherlands. But 
the doughty Swiss are not easily conquered. In three successive 
battles they were the victors and in the last of the three, Nancy, 
in 1477, Charles himself was slain. In 1499 the emperor Maxi¬ 
milian again confirmed the liberties of the Swiss cantons, and 
in 1648 the Swiss Confederation shook off its connection with 
the empire completely (the Peace of Westphalia). 

Students of self-government should study Swiss institutions. 
With three official languages and marked division in religion 
the Swiss are all attached to their country above everything 
else. Further, self-government among them is no longer self¬ 
distrustful, but assured. Governmental extravagance is as 
unknown as is political corruption. Perhaps the secret is 
age. It is like the English gardener’s recipe for good turf— 
prepare the soil well, use good seed, then roll it for six hundred 
years. 

Growth of the Rhine Towns 

Another important feature of German history in the later 
middle ages was her commercial expansion. Indeed, town 
life experienced a more important development in Germany, 
in the later middle ages, than in any other country of Europe. 
The river towns of the Rhine made the fullest possible use of 
their advantages as middlemen between England and the Low 
Countries and central Europe. Cologne was the acknowledged 
leader of the Rhine towns, but other cities of importance were 
Mainz, Strassbourg, Treves, and Basel. All these towns enjoyed 
a measure of self-governing authority, some claiming to be 
free cities of the empire while others still acknowledged the 
overlordship of some local magnate. It is noteworthy that the 
municipal government in German towns was entirely in the 
hands of the merchant class, both the artisans and the local 
landed nobility being excluded. Associations of towns for mutual 
protection were common. The imperial authority was weak at 
best and after the death of Frederick II it collapsed completely. 
“Private warfare waged ceaselessly, and robber-bands infested 


GERMANY AND THE SLAV STATES 


555 


the rivers and highways.” The Rhine towns, seeing their 
trade utterly ruined, entered into a “league of holy peace”, 
in 1254. A fleet of six hundred boats was provided for, to pa¬ 
trol the river. Boats were to be “well equipped with bowmen”, 
and each city was to “prepare herself as well as she can and 
supply herself with arms for knights and foot-soldiers.” 

German Commercial Expansion in the Baltic 

Far more important than the growth of the Rhine towns, 
however, was the rise of German towns along the Baltic. We 
have seen that the trade of the Baltic in the early middle ages 
was in the hands of the Northmen. As the economic develop¬ 
ment of western Europe proceeded the trade of the Baltic in¬ 
creased greatly, and the Scandinavians became the middle¬ 
men between western Europe and the great world of the Slavs 
whose confines touched the Eastern Empire. 

German commercial expansion in the Baltic took the form 
of an attempt to take the control of the Baltic trade away from 
the Scandinavians. It began with the development of Liibeck 
and Bremen in the eleventh century. Henry the Lion, duke 
of Saxony, gave a great impetus to the founding of Baltic towns 
in the twelfth century, as we have seen; and in the thirteenth 
century the Teutonic Order carried the movement eastward 
along the shores of the Baltic through Prussia and into Lithu¬ 
ania. Contact between the Baltic towns and the Rhine towns 
came quickly; cooperation was essential if German trade was 
to make the conquests which German merchants contemplated. 
Leagues of ever widening range were formed by the German 
towns. “Quarters” for German merchants were established, 
in London for the English trade, in Bruges for the trade of 
Flanders, and in Bergen and Stockholm for the trade of Nor¬ 
way and Sweden. 

The Hanseatic League 

The name “Hanseatic League” is first heard of in the four¬ 
teenth century, though similar leagues had existed earlier. At its 
height the League included upwards of eighty cities, organized 
in four circles. The four capitals were Cologne, Liibeck, Bruns- 


556 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


wick, and Danzig. Lubeck was the capital of the whole league, 
a displacement of Cologne as the commercial metropolis of 
Germany as significant as Prussia’s displacement of Austria 
in the leadership of Germany five hundred years later. One of 
the most important cities of the League was Wisby, on the is¬ 
land of Gothland, in the eastern Baltic. Wisby had been founded 
by the Northmen and so fortunate was her position with ref¬ 
erence to the trade routes of the Baltic that her merchants 
became famous for their wealth. The Wisby pigs, we are asked 
to believe, fed out of silver troughs. 

The Hanseatic League is seen at the height of its power dur¬ 
ing its war with Denmark. That country, as a glance at the 
map will reveal, controlled the waterway between the German 
towns of the Baltic and the towns of the North Sea. Further¬ 
more, the shortest land route between the two regions lay 
through Denmark; and finally, the very important herring 
fisheries of the Baltic lay in Danish waters. Valdemar IV of 
Denmark (1340-1375) strove for a united Scandinavia which 
should recover the lost commercial supremacy of the Vikings. 
The Hanseatic League accepted the issue and made ready for 
a bitter contest. In the war which followed the League was 
completely successful. Denmark was overrun and Copenhagen, 
the Danish capital, was taken and destroyed. By the Treaty 
of Stralsund (1370) it was provided that no Danish king should 
succeed to the throne, in tho future, until his choice had been ap¬ 
proved by the League, the price of approval being, naturally, 
confirmation of the League’s commercial and fishing privileges. 

The Hanseatic League’s period of greatest prosperity was 
brief. A generation after the League’s great triumph Norway, 
Sweden, and Denmark united under one sovereign (Union of 
Kalmar, 1397). This union succeeded in holding the League 
in check. The fifteenth century then brought changes in the 
economic life of Europe which affected the League most ad¬ 
versely. First, England threw off her economic vassalage to 
the League and through the building of ships and the founding 
of trading companies made her own commercial contacts 
abroad. Then the Low Countries were drawn more and more into 
the French orbit and away from German influences by the 


GERMANY AND THE SLAV STATES 


557 


French dukes of Burgundy. About 1450 nature herself joined 
the enemies of the League when the herring moved from Baltic 
waters to the North Sea, off the coast of Holland. The dis¬ 
covery of the new way to India toward the end of the century 
wrought a revolution in mediaeval trade, moving its center 
farther to the west. London displaced Lubeck and Antwerp 
displaced Venice. The ruin of the Hansa in the Baltic area it¬ 
self was completed by the rise of Sweden and of Russia in the 
sixteenth century. 

German Eastward Expansion 

German territorial expansion to the east continued in the 
later middle ages along the lines marked out in the earlier 
centuries. It has been pointed out that this eastward expan¬ 
sion was the “great deed” of Germany in the middle ages, 
three-fifths of the present Fatherland having been conquered and 
colonized in that period. By the thirteenth century German 
colonists had crossed the Oder and were firmly entrenched in 
positions from which they have never been dislodged. Progress 
toward the Vistula was then checked by the rise of Poland, of 
which more later; German colonization of Slav territory had 
always had a missionary motive, and the Poles had long since 
been converted to the Roman Catholic faith. Along the shores 
of the Baltic, however, were Slavs who were yet heathen and 
so might be deemed “fair game”. Their political development, 
moreover, was not advanced and their resistance to well or¬ 
ganized colonizing efforts was correspondingly feeble. 

The two principal groups of heathen Slavs were the Prussians, 
on both sides of the Vistula, and the Lithuanians, farther to 
the east and north. A beginning was made with the Prussians 
when the bishop of Riga, in 1200, founded the Order of the 
Sword for their “conversion”. A quarter of a century later 
the Teutonic Order transferred its work from the Near East 
to the Baltic. Frederick II invested the order in advance with 
all the territory it could conquer between the Vistula and the 
Gulf of Finland, thus establishing in outline a new mark for 
the defense of the empire from the Lithuanians and the Rus¬ 
sians. These “missionaries of the mailed fist”, as the Teutonic 


558 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


knights might be called, were extraordinarily successful. Cas¬ 
tles were erected and garrisoned, monasteries and churches 
built, and towns and villages founded and colonized by mer¬ 
chants and peasants from “Old Germany”. Within half a 
century Prussia had been won. Native Prussian nobles were 
allowed to keep part of their lands provided they accepted 
Christianity and became vassals of the Order. During the 
fourteenth century the war was carried into Lithuania, where 
progress was slower and success less complete, however. In 
fact, German eastward expansion received a definite check 
in the fourteenth century, and during the fifteenth century 
some ground was actually lost. 

Early Movements of the Slavs 

The reason for this was the rise of new Slav states on Ger¬ 
many’s eastern frontier, and beyond. The old home of the Slav 
peoples was the region of forests and swamps in the basin of 
the Pripet river, a tributary of the Dnieper, north of the Car¬ 
pathian mountains. Their mode of life, mainly pastoral with 
feeble attempts at agriculture, made constant movement a 
necessity and tribes of Slavs moved out from their common cen¬ 
ter in every direction. The westward migration of the Germans 
in the later centuries of the Roman Empire left vacant a vast 
tract of land to the east of the Elbe, with the Danube and the 
Baltic as its southern and northern limits. Slavs slowly moved 
into these vacant lands, a gradual process that occupied the 
time from the German withdrawal, about 200 a.d., to the year 
1000. These Slavs are known as the Western Slavs. In the 
ninth century a terrible catastrophe overwhelmed the Slav 
world, cutting off the Western Slavs permanently from their 
kinsmen to the east and south. This was an invasion of Mag¬ 
yars, the Asiatic ancestors of the modern Hungarians, which 
thrust a great wedge into the center of the Slav settlements. 

Bohemia 

Let us follow the fortunes of the Western Slavs. We have 
seen that the Germans as early as Charlemagne had begun 
to push across the Elbe and then the Oder in their long effort 


GERMANY AND THE SLAV STATES 


559 


to “reconquer” lands which the Western Slavs had settled. 
As time went on the resistance of the Slavs stiffened. The 
constant hammering of German attack “welded together the 
scattered tribes into larger political units”, and two western 
Slav states were formed, Bohemia and Poland. The Bohemians 
or Czechs dwelt in a large and fertile plateau in the upper 
valley of the Elbe. Their land was exposed to German attack 
on two sides, though mountain ranges afforded a measure of 
protection. This made possible a German penetration of Bo¬ 
hemia which has been very considerable without being quite 
overwhelming. As early as the days of Otto the Great Bohemia 
was constrained to accept the overlordship of Germany, and 
the kingdom of Bohemia became a member of the empire, in 
time, with her king as one of the greater princes and electors. 

But while preserving her political identity in this way Bo¬ 
hemia witnessed the slow infiltration through the centuries of 
German priests and monks, German nobles, merchants, and 
peasants. The native Czech nobility eventually adopted Ger¬ 
man ways and married German wives. By the fourteenth 
century the native language was no longer spoken by any one 
who pretended to be anybody; it had become, like Anglo- 
Saxon after the Norman Conquest, the language of the peas¬ 
antry. In 1306 the native line of Bohemian kings gave out and 
the crown was offered by the Czech nobles to a succession of 
foreign princes. In 1310 the House of Luxembourg accepted 
the crown, as we have seen, and reigned in Bohemia for over 
a century. 

Under Charles IV of the Luxembourgs there began a Czech 
renascence. The saying was that to Germany this emperor was 
at best a father-in-law, but to Bohemia he was a real father. 
Charles was eager to rescue the national language from neglect; 
he learned to speak the Czech tongue fluently himself and loved 
it, and he saw to it that it was constantly made use of in the 
administration. In 1347 he founded the University of Prague, 
making it a studium generate by papal authority. The profes¬ 
sors and students were to have the same privileges as at Bologna 
and Paris, and Prague itself was closely modeled on Paris, 
where Charles had been a student. The Hussite movement of 


560 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


the early fifteenth century was at least as much national as 
religious. John Huss first attained fame as the leader of a 
movement to rescue his beloved university from German con¬ 
trol. After his death at Constance Bohemia was aflame with 
anti-teutonic fury. 

The Czechs were taught to beat the Germans by Ziska (d. 
1424), a great Bohemian patriot, who thus gave a fresh dem¬ 
onstration of a fact revealed at Sempach and at Agincourt, 
namely, that peasants, well armed and drilled, can beat knights. 
Indeed, Ziska is one of the few great generals of European his¬ 
tory, as is revealed in his emphasis upon rapidity of movement, 
concentration of forces, and study of terrain. We have already 
seen that the Bohemians not only repulsed the crusades sent 
against them but poured forth in furious attack on their Ger¬ 
man neighbors, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake 
that made their name a byword for centuries. George Pode- 
brad (1458-1471), a Bohemian noble, was finally placed on 
the Bohemian throne. 

Of course the full tide of anti-German reaction in Bohemia 
receded at last and the Bohemian crown fell to the Hapsburgs; 
but the Germanizing of the Bohemians had been definitely 
checked. The Czech renascence of the later middle ages helped 
to keep the national consciousness alive through centuries of 
German rule, until the World War made possible its resurrection 
in the Republic of Czecho-Slovakia. 

Poland 

The Poles dwelt in the rich plain of the lower Vistula river. 
German pressure was a determining factor in the organisation 
of a strong military state before the year 1000. The ruling 
prince adopted the title of king and became a convert to Chris¬ 
tianity, partly with a view to depriving the German invaders 
of the missionary motive. By the eleventh century the Poles 
had all been converted to the Roman Catholic faith. With 
western Christianity came western institutions, and Polish so¬ 
ciety became feudal. German merchants settled in the Polish 
towns and the middle class in Poland was Germanized; but 
the nobility, the peasantry, and the priesthood remained solidly 


GERMANY AND THE SLAV STATES 


561 


Polish. Poland was thus much more resistant to German ab¬ 
sorption and a much more substantial obstacle to German ad¬ 
vance than was Bohemia. 

Failing in their efforts to push directly eastward through 
Poland German colonists began, in the thirteenth century, 
to turn to the northeast and follow the shores of the Baltic. 
We have seen something of the success of these efforts. It ap¬ 
peared that Poland, and possibly Lithuania as well, was to be 
cut off from the sea. Indeed, the Poles seemingly accepted the 
inevitable and themselves began to turn eastward, in the four¬ 
teenth century, in search of an outlet to the Black Sea. Then 
occurred an event that “profoundly altered the whole history 
of central and eastern Europe.” The seventeen year old 
queen of Poland was persuaded to marry the pagan duke of 
Lithuania, a condition being that he and his people accept 
Christianity. Ladislas Jagellon thus became, in 1386, king of 
united Poland and Lithuania and the founder of a great Polish 
dynasty. The immediate objective of the united states was to 
check the advance of the Teutonic Order, and success came 
almost at once. 

The order found it very difficult to gather recruits for its 
“Crusade,” now that the Lithuanians were Christians, and 
was compelled to hire mercenaries to carry on its “missionary 
work”. In 1410, at Tannenburg, the forces of Poland-Lithu- 
ania completely defeated the Knights in a battle fought near 
the spot where Hindenburg annihilated the Russians in 1915. 
The order kept up the fight for half a century longer, but in 
1466 was forced to capitulate. By the Treaty of Thorn the 
Knights ceded West Prussia to Poland. East Prussia was kept 
by the order but it was held as a fief of Poland and so passed 
out of the German orbit. Thus had German eastward advance 
suffered a severe reverse at the hands of a rising Slav power. 
In 1500 Poland stretched right across eastern Europe from the 
Baltic to the Black Sea, her territory being three times the 
size of France. Lithuania and parts of Russia were united with 
her. The great Teutonic Order recognized her sovereignty and 
Bohemia and Hungary chose their sovereigns from the Polish 
royal house. 


562 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Hungary 

Mention has been made of the Magyars who drove a wedge 
into the center of the Slav world, dividing the Western Slavs 
from their other kinsmen. The Magyars were Asiatics, and of 
the Mongoloid race originally. They settled in the wide valley 
of the upper Danube, forming a solid military state called 
Hungary. Converted to the Roman Catholic faith about the 
year 1000, a native dynasty was founded by St. Stephen, the 
the first king of Hungary. Like the Germans, the Magyars 
also pursued a policy of expansion against their Slav neighbors. 
What Magyar rivalry in this field might have meant for Ger¬ 
many, eventually, we cannot tell, for in the later middle ages 
Hungary was called upon to fight for her life against the Turks. 
A brilliant chapter of Hungarian history was written by John 
Hunyadi, hero of the siege of Belgrade in 1456, and his son 
Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary from 1458 to 1490. Even 
a little cooperation from western Europe during this half cen¬ 
tury might have saved much of eastern Europe from a Turkish 
domination of centuries. But it was not an age of international 
cooperation in any realm. In 1516 the Hungarians were crushed 
by the Turks at Mohacs. The greater part of Hungary fell 
to the Turks and the remaining fragment to the House of 
Hapsburg. 


Russia 

While some Slavs moved westward from their old home in 
the Pripet marshes others turned to the east and northeast. 
When the Eastern Slavs reached the valley of the Dnieper they 
came in contact with the remains of an ancient Hellenistic 
civilization that had developed in the towns along the old 
trade route between the Black Sea and the Baltic, a route as 
old as Herodotus. Various Slav principalities were formed, 
centering about these towns. In the more important princi¬ 
palities the leadership was supplied by Norse adventurers, who 
began to make their way across the great “isthmus” between 
the Baltic and the Black Sea in the middle of the ninth century 
(852-862). Rurik founded a Slav state at Old Novgorod, about 




























































































































564 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


one hundred miles south of the present Leningrad, and his 
successor moved to Kiev on the middle Dnieper, then the 
southern outpost of the Eastern Slavs. 

At Kiev the House of Rurik built up the first great Russian 
state, and the principality of Kiev, or Russ, as it was then 
called, gradually extended its authority over all the Eastern 
Slavs. By the twelfth century expansion had brought the rulers 
of Kiev into touch with the Baltic on the north and the Black 
Sea to the south. Meanwhile, between 980 and 1000 a.d., the 
Russians and their rulers had accepted Greek Christianity, 
though not without a friendly hearing having been given to 
Roman Catholic missionaries from Germany and to apostles 
of Islam from the Bulgars. The conversion of the Russians, 
the “great deed” of the Greek church, was a momentous event. 
It made Russia Byzantine in civilization and thus helped to 
cut her off from the rest of Europe. 

The Grand Princedom of Kiev reached its height under 
Yaroslav (d. 1054) whose marriage alliances with Poland, Nor¬ 
way, Hungary, and France justified his claim to be one of the 
leading princes of Europe. After his death disintegration set in. 
Some one has enumerated eighty-three civil wars, in the cen¬ 
tury and a half that followed the death of Yaroslav, besides 
forty-six invasions of nomads from the south and east. A 
movement of population set in to the north and northeast 
and a swarm of new principalities were founded in the upper 
valley of the Volga and its tributaries. 

In the thirteenth century both Kiev and the newer Slav prin¬ 
cipalities were overwhelmed by “the greatest calamity that 
ever befell eastern Slavdom,” the Mongol invasion. A petty 
Mongolian chieftain of genius known to history as Genghiz 
Khan had established, before his death in 1226 a.d., the greatest 
Asiatic empire in history. The sons and grandsons of Genghiz 
Khan proceeded to extend his empire still further in every 
direction. The whole of Russia was overwhelmed, between 
1237 and 1243, and Tartar horsemen pushed westward through 
Poland to Saxony and through Hungary to Vienna and Venice. 
The capture and sack of Kiev came in 1240; it was six centuries 
before that city recovered its former size and prosperity. West- 


GERMANY AND THE SLAY STATES 


565 


ern Europe was saved by the diversion of Mongol interest to 
China and Persia; indeed China became the center of the Mon¬ 
golian state and Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghiz, established 
his capital at Peking. The Mongols withdrew from Poland 
and Hungary but maintained and consolidated their hold on 
Russia. 

For two centuries Russia was a part of the Mongol empire. 
Like other nomad conquerors the Tartars did not interfere 
with the laws, customs, language, or religion of their subject 
peoples. Indeed, the Russian princes were allowed to remain 
at the head of their principalities, provided only they made 
proper submission to the Great Khan and answered promptly 
all charges brought against them. The payment of a very heavy 
poll tax and the supplying of contingents of troops were the 
principal demands made upon the Russians by their Mongol 
lords. Nevertheless the Mongol occupation left an indelible 
imprint upon Russia and the Russians and, like the conversion 
to Greek Christianity, this helps to explain the non-European 
character of Russian society and government. The Russian 
state which arose after the Mongol withdrawal remained Tartar 
in its autocracy and in its insistence that all Russians were 
the “slaves” of the state, Tartar in its military organisation 
and methods, and Tartar in much of its law, with its use of 
mutilation, torture, and flogging, to mention only a few of the 
evidences of Mongol influence. 

The leadership of the Russians in throwing off Mongol rule 
was assumed by the principality of Moscow. There a family 
of great ability had established itself in the twelfth century. 
The geographical situation of the city was favorable both for 
security and for trade, and the principality grew steadily in 
population all through the long period of Mongol rule. The 
Grand Dukes of Moscow deemed it expedient to cooperate 
loyally with their conquerors and they became the official and 
trusted tax-gatherers in Russia for the Great Khan. The pres¬ 
tige of Moscow was greatly enhanced when the primate of the 
Russian church moved his capital to that city, and the Grand 
Dukes of Moscow gradually assumed the religious leadership 
of all the Russians. 


566 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Meanwhile the Mongol empire slowly disintegrated and the 
Mongol hold on Russia weakened little by little. The attitude 
of the Grand Dukes of Moscow gradually changed from defer¬ 
ence to defiance. Under Ivan the Great (1462-1505) Russia 
was freed from the Mongols altogether. Not only so; Ivan suc¬ 
ceeded in uniting all the Russians under his authority and so 
became the founder of the modern Russian state. 

The Southern Slavs 

The Southern Slavs began to push southward across the 
Danube into the Balkan peninsula in the reign of Justinian, 
as we have seen, and they eventually penetrated as far south 
as the Peloponnesus. Two leading Slav kingdoms were formed 
in the Balkans, Serbia and Bulgaria. The later middle ages is 
occupied with the story of the struggle between these two Slav 
states for dominance in the Balkan peninsula, a contest in 
which the Eastern Empire was obliged to take a hand from 
time to time. The contest was brought to an abrupt close when 
the tide of Turkish advance overwhelmed all three states in the 
fourteenth century. 


For Further Reading 

J. W. Thompson, The Middle Ages, II, chaps. 32 and 35 

-, Economic and Social History of Europe in the Later Middle 

Ages, chaps. 4 to 8 

R. Lodge, The Close of the Middle Ages 
E. Emerton, Beginnings of Modern Europe 

E. F. Henderson, Short History of Germany 
James Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire 

W. Stubbs, Germany in the Later Middle Ages 
Cambridge Modern History, I, chaps. 3, 9, and 11 
W. D. McCracken, The Rise of the Swiss Republic 
H. Zimmer, The Hansa Towns 

F. Nowak, Mediaeval Slavdom and the Rise of Russia 
F. Lutzow, Bohemia 

R. Dyboski, Outlines of Polish History 

F. Schevill, A History of the Balkan Peninsula, chaps. 5, 6, 7, and 11 
' B. Pares, A History of Russia 
R. Beazley, N. Forbes, and C. A. Birkett, Russia 



CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE 


EUROPE FACES ABOUT 

Throughout the middle ages, as we have seen, Europe faced 
the East. The East was the mother of the West and economic 
and cultural ties bound the two closely together for centuries. 
Towards the close of the middle ages, however, great changes 
were in progress. The advance of the Ottoman Turks made 
close cultural connections between Europe and the East less 
desirable and economic relations less easy. The development 
of strong national monarchies in France, Spain, and England 
brought to the front in the affairs of Europe countries whose 
eastern interests had never been great, and shifted the balance 
of power in Europe farther west. Then, too, western Europe 
came of age intellectually, about this time, in the Renascence. 
In brief, we may say that Europe was making ready to face 
about. 

We have already seen something of the development of 
strong nation-states in the West. France became the leading 
power in Europe, in the fifteenth century, and even little Eng¬ 
land, under the Yorkist and Tudor sovereigns, stood upon her 
own feet, a definite factor in international affairs. Reaching 
farther westward into the Atlantic than either France or Eng¬ 
land, however, were Spain and Portugal; and their development 
must be deemed a fact of the greatest importance in the west¬ 
ward “orientation” of Europe. 

Spain Relatively Non-European 

With the possible exception of Russia, Spain is the least 
European of European countries and in the cultural sense, at 
least, the Pyrenees are “the highest mountains in Europe.” 
The Pyrenees are indeed a formidable barrier and even to¬ 
day railways entering the Spanish peninsula skirt the coast 
on either side. We may say that Spain has her back to Europe 

567 


568 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


and faces Africa. It was from Africa that the culture of Carth¬ 
age spread to Spain, and Rome first entered Spain as the suc¬ 
cessor of the Carthaginians. Saracen civilization, also, crossed 
to Spain from Africa. The Spanish peninsula resembles North 
Africa rather than Europe climatically. The peninsula stands 
high above the surrounding water, averaging 2000 feet above 
sea level, or higher than any other country in Europe except 
Switzerland. In the southern two-thirds of this lofty plateau 
there are but two seasons, the wet and the dry, as in other parts 
of the hot and arid zone which stretches through northern 
Africa to Arabia. The care of flocks and herds has been and 
is the principal preoccupation of man in Spain, the cultiva¬ 
tion of the soil being secondary. A feudal society based upon 
agriculture never made itself at home south of the Pyrenees. 

Roman and Moorish Elements in Spain 

In the history of the Spanish peninsula as a civilized land 
the first great fact is its Romanization. This was thorough¬ 
going and complete. The native stock dropped their own lan¬ 
guage and learned Latin, from which modern Spanish and 
Portuguese are descended. Indeed, so completely Roman did 
the Spanish natives become that they supplied the Empire 
with many of her greatest leaders. Among such were the em¬ 
perors Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, and Theodosius, 
and the writers Seneca, Martial, and Quintilian. Roman ma¬ 
terial remains in Spain are among the most magnificent in the 
world; they include a mighty viaduct over the Tagus river 
broad enough to accommodate four wagons abreast. 

Of the regime of the West Goths in Spain, lasting for more 
than two centuries, simply nothing remains to-day. The Arab 
conquest, however, introduced another dominant strain into 
Spanish civilization. As late as the thirteenth century the Moor¬ 
ish civilization of Spain was still the finest in the West. In 
agriculture, in industry, and in learning alike the Moors were 
for some centuries the teachers of western Europe. Upon 
Spain herself, especially in the south, Moorish influence has 
been permanent as well as profound. Sedgwick says, “There, 
architectural monuments, dwellings, the ways and customs of 


EUROPE FACES ABOUT 


569 


the people, and still more conspicuously their eyes, features, 
and look proclaim a Berber or Arab inheritance; inasmuch as 
the emigration to America was mainly from the south of Spain, 
a tincture of Moorish blood is probably to be found in almost 
all the Spanish peoples from California to the Argentine.” 

But the civilization of the Moors was not only brilliant but 
“brittle”. An independent caliphate was established at Cor¬ 
dova some years after the death of Mohammed, though its 
connection with the rest of the Mohammedan world remained 
close, especially in trade. The connection between Spain and 
Africa proved perilous. Twice the caliphs of Cordova were 
overwhelmed by swarms of half-civilized and wholly fanatical 
tribes from North Africa called Berbers, recently converted to 
Mohammedanism. In 1087 and again in 1146 the Berbers 
drove out the caliphs and set up short-lived “empires”. These 
smashing blows wrecked the administrative machinery estab¬ 
lished by the caliphs, and local governors, or emirs, began to 
set themselves up as practically independent princes. Even 
so had the empire of Charlemagne given place to a swarm of 
feudal baronies three centuries earlier. 

Origins of Christian Spain 

The political disintegration of the Moorish government had 
a consequence much more important than the rise of independ¬ 
ent Moslem emirates, however. That was the rise of Chris¬ 
tian states to the north. The Moorish conquest of Spain had 
never been quite complete. In the Pyrenees and its southern 
foothills little communities of native Christians continued to 
maintain their independence. As they made headway against 
the Moors several kingdoms developed, such as Navarre, Leon, 
Castile, and Aragon. The growth of these kingdoms was very 
slow; probably no region of western Europe was poorer in 
natural resources and advantages than northern Spain. The 
land was fit only for grazing, and there was little trade of any 
sort, for the land routes of Europe passed by on the other side 
of the Pyrenees, and trade by sea was still the monopoly of the 
Moors. The Christian kingdoms of Spain, therefore, continued 
for long to be dominated by the caliphs to the south of them. 


570 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


With the break-up of the caliphate in the twelfth century con¬ 
ditions grew more favorable, for the Christian states were thus 
enabled to compete with the Moslem principalities on something 
like even terms. We should be making a grave error, however, 
if we pictured the Christian princes as making common cause 
against the Moors. They were quite as ready to fight each 
other. 

Leon and Castile 

A few words about the early history of each of the Christian 
kingdoms will be in order. In the extreme northwest of the 
peninsula a tiny “kingdom of the Asturias” survived the 
Arab conquest. There was an early king of the Asturias 
with the auspicious name of Alphonso I (739-756). The ex¬ 
tension of the Frankish empire south of the Pyrenees, by Charle¬ 
magne, brought about the temporary eclipse of the Asturias, 
but the tiny state soon emerged again and began to extend its 
borders eastward and southward. A notable achievement was 
the capture of the city of Leon, about 850 a.d. Leon was a fairly 
important stronghold of the Saracens, commanding a road to 
the interior of Spain. It had been a sizable city in Roman times, 
having been the seat of the Roman Legio VII, whence its name. 
Leon soon gave its name to the growing kingdom of the Asturias. 
The kingdom of Leon, to give it its new name, then began its 
march to the southeast, establishing a mark system in a fashion 
now familiar to us. The many castles of the most important 
of these marks gave it the name of Castile. This name displaced, 
in its turn, the name of Leon, as expansion proceeded and as 
Castile outgrew Leon in importance. Early in the eleventh cen¬ 
tury the kingdom of Castile, in which Leon had been merged, 
stood forth as the largest and strongest of the Christian king¬ 
doms. 

Aragon and Barcelona 

Aragon’s early history is much like that of Leon. On lofty 
table-land near the Pyrenees, overlooking a tributary of the 
Ebro, Aragon pushed down the Ebro valley toward Saragossa, 
capital of an important Moslem principality. Saragossa fell in 


EUROPE FACES ABOUT 


571 


1118, and its capture by the Aragonese is a landmark in the 
history of Christian Spain. In the lower valley of the Ebro, 
stretching northward to the mountains, lay the county of 
Barcelona. This county had formed part of the Spanish March 
of Charlemagne and was closely connected with the south of 
France in language and in culture. Barcelona also shared 
in the industrial and commercial revival of the south of France 
during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The union of the 
rural Aragon with the urban Barcelona came in 1137, and con¬ 
stitutes another landmark in the history of Spain. The kings 
of Aragon took up the commercial interests of Barcelona and 
pushed them with vigor. From the thirteenth century onwards 
Aragon was a commercial power of much importance in the 
western Mediterranean and even played a role in Italian poli¬ 
tics. The union of Leon and Castile in the eleventh century 
followed by that of Aragon and Barcelona in the twelfth sug¬ 
gests that unification was the rule in Spanish history. In reality 
this is very far from being the case. Political union of Spanish 
states has not been followed by a union of hearts and there is 
still much of provincialism in Spain. 

Portugal 

The southwestern corner of the peninsula escaped even formal 
union with the rest, in the middle ages, and still stands aloof. 
Here a fragment of the central plateau is sunken and thus cut 
off from the rest. A king of Castile, in 1095, gave his daughter 
in marriage to a French baron, one Henry, duke of Burgundy. 
The royal father gave his daughter the southwestern counties 
of Coimbra and Oporto as dowry. The son of this marriage 
raised the standard of revolt against Castile and set up an 
independent kingdom. These were the beginnings of Portugal, 
whose total area to-day covers but one-seventh of the whole 
peninsula. The pope recognized Portuguese independence, and 
the Portuguese people celebrate 1139 as their natal year. 

The Unification of Spain 

Of separate origin and jealous disposition, the Christian 
kingdoms at times united against the common enemy. Natu- 


572 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


rally enough, the period of fullest cooperation came in the age 
of the Crusades, when Christian Europe was launching itself 
against the Infidel. Some of the crusading fervor overflowed to 
Spain. During the twelfth century French, Flemish, and Eng¬ 
lish crusaders flocked to Spain and enlisted in the Christian 
armies. Venice, Pisa, and Genoa sent ships and supplies. A 
force of English and German crusaders, on their way by sea 
to join in the Second Crusade, stopped off and captured Lisbon 



for the Portuguese in 1147. The great Military Orders of the 
Near East entered the Spanish field, and new ones were founded 
in Spain itself, such as those of Calatrava, St. Julian, and Santi¬ 
ago. The high point of Christian success came in the battle of 
Las Navas da Tolosa in 1212, in which the king of Castile, 
with forces drawn from every Spanish kingdom, with crusad¬ 
ers from France and Italy, and with the special blessing of 
Pope Innocent III, won a complete victory over the Moors. 
Through this success the tide of Christian advance swept far 
to the south. In 1244 Seville was taken and in 1250 Cadiz fell, 
bringing the Castilians to the sea. By the close of the thirteenth 
century Granada alone was left to the Moors. 



















































EUROPE FACES ABOUT 


573 


It may seem strange that now that the Christian blood was 
up, so to speak, and the crusaders were within sight of their 
goal, the tiny state of Granada, last stronghold of the Moors, 
should have held out for two centuries longer. The truth is 
that the crusading motive in the wars between Christian and 
Moorish princes of Spain has been too greatly emphasized. The 
Spanish Christians did not look upon the Moors as hated in¬ 
fidels whose presence polluted the soil, as we have been wont 
to believe. It was only briefly and under the spell of the crusad¬ 
ing spirit of the north that this was ever even approximately 
true. The enduring motive that spurred on the Spanish princes 
in their unending rivalry was the tradition of Spanish unity, 
a tradition handed down from the days of Rome and the Visi¬ 
goths. Every Spanish prince dreamed of being the unifier of 
Spain, and this was as true of the Moorish princes as of the Chris¬ 
tian. We misread the history of mediaeval Spain if we regard 
the Moorish states and Moorish civilization as alien and non- 
Spanish. Modern Spaniards do not so regard them. They rec¬ 
ognize that the Moorish conquerors were “national” in their 
outlook. Christian Spaniards lived on in Moorish dominions 
undisturbed in their religion, their language, and their law. 
Christian bishops lived peacefully in Moslem territory and 
carried on their work. Many Christian women accepted Mos¬ 
lems as husbands, and a large number of Christians embraced 
the Mohammedan religion, as a matter of preference. The 
unification of Spain was essentially the conquest of the south 
by the north, as in France. And as in France, the crusading 
motive was called in to sharpen the edge of northern weapons. 

Much has been seen of Castile, in the story of the conquest 
of the south of Spain by the north, and but little of Aragon. 
That is because the Aragonese, after the union with Barcelona 
in 1137, turned to the sea. Aragon’s first commercial relations 
were with the Mediterranean ports of the south of France, in 
whose industrial and commercial revival she had a share. The 
conquest of the south of France by the north, however, was a 
severe blow to the maritime enterprise of Aragon. But this 
only inspired the Aragonese to fare farther afield. Under the 
leadership of King James I (1213-1276) Aragon extended her 


574 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 




Mediterranean frontage by the conquest of Valencia (1225). The 
Balearic Isles were then taken from the Moors (1229). Using 
these as stepping stones, the merchants of Aragon began to 
compete with the merchants of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice in the 
markets of Sicily, North Africa, and the Near East. This 
Mediterranean policy of Aragon reached a successful climax 
when, in 1282, following a rising of the natives against their 
French rulers, Sicily and southern Italy fell to the Aragon dy¬ 
nasty and Aragon stood forth as the dominant state of the west¬ 
ern Mediterranean. 

The internal development of Aragon and Castile proceeded 
along lines that are familiar to us. In each country an heredi¬ 
tary kingship evolved out of small beginnings and after several 
false starts. In each, also, the leadership of the crown came to 
be a more and more important factor in the state. The success 
of the policy of expansion contributed greatly to this end, and 
so also did the introduction, in the thirteenth century, of 
Homan law. The privileged classes of nobles and the higher 
clergy continued long to exercise a restraining influence upon 
the crown, but the monarchs of both countries countered this 
opposition by favoring the industrial and trading classes in 
the cities. Spanish cities had been quite important in Homan 
times, and the civilization of the Moors, also, was largely a 
civilization of the cities. This will explain the fact that rep¬ 
resentatives of the cities appeared in the parliaments of Aragon 
and Castile one hundred years before they did in the English 
parliament, and one hundred and fifty years before the sum¬ 
moning of the first estates general in France. 

Modern Spain dates from the marriage of King Ferdinand 
of Aragon to Queen Isabella of Castile in 1469. This united 
the two greatest states of the Spanish peninsula. The two king¬ 
doms supplemented each other admirably. Castile was agricul¬ 
tural, Aragon was industrial and commercial; Castile was mili¬ 
tary, Aragon naval. It is not surprising that the union of the 
two was followed by a further conquest which carried the uni¬ 
fication of Spain as far as it has ever gone; Granada, last of 
the Moorish states, fell in 1492. Thus a new and powerful 
nation entered the family of European states. Indeed, it was 


EUROPE FACES ABOUT 


575 


a state destined quickly to assume the leadership in European 
affairs. Politically, through such sovereigns as Charles V and 
Philip II, and in culture, through such leaders in their fields 
as Loyola, Velasquez, and Cervantes, Spain dominated the 
life of Europe in the sixteenth century. 

Decline of the Eastern Empire 

With the rise of Christian Spain in the western Mediterranean 
may be contrasted the decline of the Byzantine Empire in the 
East. We have seen that the Roman Empire survived in the 
East many centuries after its fall in the West. Through these 
centuries it had served as a bulwark between Europe and Asi¬ 
atic invaders. From these invaders the Eastern Empire itself 
suffered much, however. Egypt and Syria were lost in the 
eighth century; much of Asia Minor was lost in the eleventh 
century, though the eastern emperors had managed to regain 
the western and southern provinces of Asia Minor in the period 
of the early Crusades. 

The West itself then dealt the Eastern Empire a fatal blow. 
The Fourth Crusade, led astray by commercial greed and feudal 
ambition, turned against the Eastern Empire and, in 1204, as 
we have seen, captured Constantinople. In the division of 
the spoils that followed Venice secured such islands, trading 
posts, and commercial quarters as ensured her commercial 
supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean; the collapse of the 
Eastern Empire was followed by the founding of the Venetian 
empire. The western barons who had established themselves 
in the East were gradually expelled, it is true, and a Greek 
dynasty was installed at Constantinople. But the restored 
Empire was a purely local and provincial affair. Feudal dis¬ 
integration now made rapid progress, and the internal history 
of the Empire until its fall two centuries later is an unedifying 
tale of meaningless squabbles among the magnates. “ Among 
the many contemptible political creations of man it would be 
hard to find one more contemptible,” says Schevill of this 
later Empire. “For once we may harden our hearts and agree 
that the jeers which it has invited from every quarter are de¬ 
served.” Indeed, the interest in the Christian East, in the 


576 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


later middle ages, was as to whether Serbia or Bulgaria might 
not unify the Balkan peninsula and bring the decrepit Empire 
to an end. But an end was made of all such queries by the 
rise of the Ottoman Turks. 

Rise of the Ottoman Turks 

The central and eastern provinces of Asia Minor had passed 
under the control of the Turks in the eleventh century. As 
time passed a fundamental population change took place and 
the whole interior of Asia Minor was repeopled by nomadic 
tribes of Turks, filtering through from their native Turkestan. 
Literally scores of independent Turkish principalities, or emir¬ 
ates, were established. About the middle of the thirteenth 
century a certain Turkish chieftain, with a few hundred war¬ 
riors accompanied by their women and their flocks and herds, 
established himself in one of the northwestern provinces of 
Asia Minor, close to the border of the Greek Empire. This 
leader seems to have been an unimportant person—of no greater 
importance, at least, than many of the Turkish chieftains of 
the neighborhood and much less powerful than some of the 
Christian magnates near at hand. 

In the year 1289 this Turkish chief, whose name was Ertogrul, 
was succeeded by his son Osman. This young Turkish chief¬ 
tain, warlike and vigorous, saw in the visible decay of the Byzan¬ 
tine Empire an opportunity for military expansion. He made 
war upon the petty Greek principalities to the west and north, 
and added them to his dominions. The year of his death, 1326, 
saw the high point of Osman’s success as the important Greek 
city of Brusa passed into his hands. The great chieftain’s fol¬ 
lowers began to call themselves Osmanli, or “sons of Osman”, 
a word which we have corrupted into “Ottoman”. Osman’s 
son and successor Orkhan (1326-1359) pursued the policy of 
expansion into Greek territory even more brilliantly. Nicsea, 
second city in the Empire, quickly fell into his hands, followed 
by Nicomedia, as the Turkish forces reached the Bosporus. 

In 1354, fateful year in the history of Europe, the Turks 
crossed the Straits of Bosporus and established themselves 
to the south of Constantinople in the peninsula of Gallipoli. 


EUROPE FACES ABOUT 


577 


Under Murad I (1359-1389), son of Orkhan, the westward 
march of the Turks continued. Leaving Constantinople on one 
side Murad captured Adrianople, second city on the European 
side, and key to the interior of the Balkans. In 1366 Murad 
took the bold step of setting up the Turkish capital in Adrian¬ 
ople. This significant move was followed by a direct challenge 
to Serbia, the one Christian power in the Balkans then capable 
of making a stand against the Turks. In 1389, at the battle of 
Kossova, the Serbian power was crushed and Serbia passed into 
Turkish hands. Most of Thrace, Macedonia, and Roumania 
had meanwhile succumbed and the inhabitants of Constanti¬ 
nople saw themselves hemmed in on every hand, “like wild 
beasts in a cage”, as a contemporary put it. 

Constantinople, and indeed eastern Europe, was saved for 
the moment by intervention from an unexpected quarter. Out 
of the East rode a Tartar conqueror called Timur the Lame, or 
Tamurlane. Rising to power swiftly, as was so often the case 
among nomadic chieftains, Tamurlane’s authority by 1400 a.d. 
stretched from India to Hungary, and through Arabia and 
Syria as far as Egypt. Asia Minor was held as in a vice, and 
the old home of the Ottoman Turks was menaced. In 1402, 
at Angora, in central Asia Minor, the Turkish leader Bayezid, 
successor to Murad I, was defeated and captured; it was his 
tragic fate to be carried in a cage in the baggage train of the 
Tartar conqueror until he died. 

The “empire” of Tamurlane fell as quickly as it rose, how¬ 
ever. After his death in 1405 Ottoman rule was reestablished, 
and after an interim of fraternal conflict among the sons of 
Bayezid, the Turkish state was unified once more. Under 
Mohammed I (1413-1421), the youngest and ablest of the sons 
of Bayezid, Turkish advance in Europe was renewed. Full of 
menace as this was for Christendom, no adequate attempt was 
made to stop it. Western Europe was in Schism, and once the 
Schism was healed, the Hussite Wars broke out; moreover, 
the Hundred Years’ War was on once more. 

After Serbia’s collapse Hungary barred the way of Turkish 
advance for a time; John Hunyadi was the soul of Hungarian 
resistance and he even succeeded for a time in carrying the war 


578 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


against the enemy. At Varna, however, in 1444, Turkish pre¬ 
dominance was reestablished, in a battle in which the Hun¬ 
garian king was killed. 

The Fall of Constantinople 

The fall of Constantinople soon followed. Though the 
Ottomans still held important provinces in Asia Minor their 
holdings in Europe were now much more important. The 
same logic that had made Adrianople capital in 1366 had long 
pointed to Constantinople as the ultimate seat of Turkish au¬ 
thority. For some years it was only their lack of a navy that 
had stayed the Turks’ assault on a city long deemed impreg¬ 
nable save by sea. In the spring of 1453, with an army of 150,- 
000, including the best engineers and the finest artillery to be 
found in Europe, and with a fleet of four hundred vessels, 
Sultan Mohammed II invested the city. It was doomed from 
the start. Completely cut off from the outside world, with 
a garrison of but eight thousand, the defense was none the less 
spirited and heroic, quite worthy of the best days of the Roman 
Empire. And like a real Roman, Constantine XI, last of the 
emperors, fell fighting in the final assault. Leaving his soldiers 
to enjoy freely the fruits of their victory the Sultan hastened 
to St. Sophia to return thanks for his triumph. His thanks, of 
course, were offered to Allah, and the “fairest church in all 
the world” became and has since remained a Mohammedan 
mosque. 

The Nature of Turkish Rule 

The better to understand the significance of the establish¬ 
ment of the Turks in Europe we must consider the character 
of the Ottoman state. The Turks were nomads and they have 
always retained certain nomadic characteristics. Indeed their 
rule of conquered peoples, and especially those of an alien reli¬ 
gion, is best understood if we use the analogy of their own 
flocks and herds. Their herds, it will be remembered, were 
carefully tended. The animals were encouraged to pasture at 
will, paying their tribute of milk and wool. Trained horses 
and dogs assisted the Turkish masters in keeping the flocks 










































































580 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


and herds in order. The conquered Christians were merely 
another species of cattle. After submission they were at once 
disarmed. Their fortifications were dismantled, and the walls 
of their cities torn down. The laws, the religion, the economic 
life of the Christians were not interfered with in the slightest; 
indeed, the lot of the Greeks was rather better under the 
Turkish conquerors than under the Byzantine Empire. Annual 
tribute, however, must be paid, and this usually took the form 
of a head tax on all non-Moslems. 

The only criticism of such a scheme of government, and it is 
a very grave one, is that it admits of no possibility of the assimi¬ 
lation of conquered and conquerors into a single people. The 
Christian subjects remained rayahs, sheep to be shorn. They 
might live happily enough for years, hardly seeing a Turkish 
official in their towns and villages save at the annual tribute 
gathering. Then, suddenly, as a restive movement was detected 
or suspected, Turkish soldiers would descend upon the unarmed 
Christians, slaying men, women, and children in indiscriminate 
fury. After which another interval of easy-going tolerance might 
ensue. 

Thus far of the nomadic characteristics of Turkish rule. But 
the Ottoman state was not merely nomadic; its solid and lasting 
success makes that clear. It will be remembered that the Otto¬ 
man conquests had been made at the expense, first, of the By¬ 
zantine Empire; other Christian states of the Balkans were 
annexed later on, but in them too Byzantine culture predomi¬ 
nated. Successive Ottoman rulers had the genius to mould 
their institutions, military, administrative, and legal, accord¬ 
ing to Byzantine models. In a very real sense the Turkish 
empire became the successor of Byzantium, and the later Sul¬ 
tans, like Mohammed II, consciously adopted the imperial 
and maritime traditions of the expiring Empire. Byzantine 
models were followed in the organisation of the Turkish army, 
the finest in Europe, and in the Turkish administrative system, 
the most efficient in the world. An annual tribute of young 
boys was levied from Christian towns and villages. These 
boys, completely cut off from home and kindred, were care¬ 
fully trained at government expense in schools maintained for 


EUROPE FACES ABOUT 


581 


the purpose. Drafted into the army or the civil service after 
the completion of their training, these young officers and offi¬ 
cials served the state, their foster-parent, with impersonal effi¬ 
ciency. Even so had the nomadic ancestors of the conquering 
Turks kept their flocks and herds in order with well trained 
horses and sheep dogs. Especially famous was the corps of 
Janissaries, recruited from Christian captives, a body of well 
paid, highly skilled professional soldiers, the best troops in 
Europe. 

The rise of the Ottoman state gravely disturbed the balance 
of power in the eastern Mediterranean. As the “successor” 
to the eastern emperors Mohammed II strove mightily to re¬ 
gain their lost provinces. Turning southward he drove the 
remaining Greek and Latin feudatories from the Peloponne¬ 
sus. To advance farther, nay, even to defend what he had won, 
the Sultan felt he must command the iEgean Sea. Thus was 
begun the “irrepressible conflict” between the Ottoman state 
and Venice, mistress of the Mediterranean. To complete our 
survey of the eastern Mediterranean, therefore, we must re¬ 
view the history of the Venetian empire. 

The Empire of Venice 

As we have seen, Venice made her fortune in the Fourth 
Crusade. To three-eighths of the city of Constantinople were 
added islands in the iEgean, including Crete, which commands 
the entrance to that sea, and trading posts along the mainland 
on either side. Gradually the whole route from Venice to 
Constantinople, through the Adriatic, Ionian, and iEgean seas, 
was studded with Venetian trading posts on the islands and 
along the coasts of those seas. Venice also planted trading 
posts at strategic points along the shores of the Black Sea, 
thus tapping Constantinople’s rich trade with the north. 

Venetian monopoly of the eastern trade was soon challenged 
by Genoa. Greek rule was reestablished in Constantinople, in 
1261, with the aid of Genoa. Thenceforth the Greek emperors, 
though unable to shake off the strangle-hold of Venice, favored 
Genoese merchants as much as they could, enabling the latter 
to gain a foothold in the iEgean, the Bosporus, and the Black 


582 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Sea. The trade war which ensued continued for more than one 
hundred years. Each city was convinced that its continued 
prosperity depended upon the extermination of its rival. Venice 
kept the upper hand throughout, though not without difficulty. 
In 1380, finally, after a Genoese fleet and army had penetrated 
the very lagoons in which Venice had anchored herself, the 
Venetians won a victory so signal, in the battle of Chioggia, 
as to take from the Genoese the power of doing them further 
harm. 

Meanwhile Venice had entered the field of Italian politics. 
Not content with winning maritime power the merchant oli¬ 
garchy began and steadfastly pursued a policy of expansion on 
the mainland which, highly successful as it was, absorbed 
more and more of the resources of the republic. The necessity 
of commanding the sources of food supply for her numerous 
inhabitants had led Venice to turn to the land, in the first 
instance. Then as her rival Genoa stirred up the powerful 
inland duchy of Milan to attack her, Venice was led to push 
farther and farther west and north. Not only Milan but 
Austria and Hungary were aroused also, and Venice poured forth 
her treasure in an unending series of campaigns, fought entirely 
with mercenary troops under hired captains. 

Relation of the Rise of the Turks to the Decline 
of Venice 

It was in the midst of her Italian successes that Venice 
was sharply challenged, in the eastern Mediterranean, by the 
Ottoman state. Beginning in 1463 the Sultan seized one after 
another of the holdings of Venice in the iEgean. Unable to 
stop the progress of Turkish arms Venice sued for peace, and 
in 1479 a treaty was signed in which Venice agreed, in return 
for the privilege of retaining her remaining posts, to pay a 
heavy fine, really tribute money, for the privilege of trading 
in Turkish waters. Venetian commercial prosperity thus suf¬ 
fered a sharp decline, and Venice turned her attention more 
and more, thereafter, to territorial expansion in Italy. 

The view has long been held and is still sometimes advanced 
that the rise of the Turks cut across the eastern trade routes 


EUROPE FACES ABOUT 


583 


and thus accomplished the ruin of Venice. This view represents 
the Turks as an inundating wave of barbarism which destroyed 
the commerce of the Arabs as well as of the Christians. The 
Turks, we are told, ‘‘added to the Moslem contempt for the 
Christian the warrior’s contempt for the mere merchant.” This 
view is based upon an altogether erroneous concept of the Otto¬ 
man state, as we have seen. Byzantine influence, in the course 
of two hundred years of close contact, had transformed the 
Turkish conquerors. They thought of themselves, and with 
some justice, as the heirs of the Byzantine Empire. They were 
not the enemies of commerce, though it may be admitted that 
they were relatively uncommercial. The ruin of the Venetian 
empire was completed by the discovery of new trade routes 
to the East, not by the closing of old ones. The discovery of 
the new trade routes is a chapter in the history of the over¬ 
seas expansion of Portugal, with the story of which we may 
conclude this chapter. 

The Beginnings of Portuguese Expansion 
Overseas 

Having expelled the Moors from her “natural” frontiers 
by the close of the thirteenth century, the Portuguese were 
chiefly concerned thenceforth with maintaining themselves in 
the face of the growing power of Castile. Toward the end of 
the fourteenth century King John I of Portugal married a 
daughter of John of Gaunt, the English magnate whose son, 
Henry of Bolingbroke, became king of England as Henry IV. 
Thus began an alliance which proved to be the most permanent 
in European history and which enabled Portugal to turn her 
eyes to the West. “The Portuguese is a Spaniard with his 
back to Castile and his eyes on the Atlantic Sea,” says de Mad¬ 
ariaga. The agricultural resources of the country are not great, 
and with Castile no longer to be feared and the Moors expelled 
from her borders, the Portuguese grandees and their followers 
looked for more worlds against which to direct their crusading 
ardor. There was little doubt as to which direction they would 
turn. In 1415 an expedition was launched against the Moors 
across the straits in North Africa and the important strong- 


584 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


hold of Cueta was taken. This feat of arms marks the beginning 
of the overseas expansion of Portugal, and indeed of Europe. 

The hero of the Portuguese attack upon Cueta was Prince 
Henry, King John’s third son (1394-1460). The young prince 
was made governor of the captured city. Chosen grand master 
of the powerful military order of Portugal, the Order of Jesus 
Christ, about the same time, Prince Henry conceived the 
grand design of using this order in a prolonged campaign against 
the Moslem power in Africa. His design was not to attack the 
Moslems of North Africa directly but to skirt the long Atlantic 
coast of the Sahara to the west and south and establish a 
“greater Portugal” in the rich and populous valley of the Sene¬ 
gal. Not that the Portuguese knew much about what they 
would find when they got there. They had seen maps made 
centuries earlier by Arab geographers whereon the coastal 
plain southwest of the Sahara was labeled simply Bilad Ghana 
or “land of wealth”. The river which watered this fertile 
tract was supposed to be a “Western Nile” whose waters came 
down, like those of the real Nile, from the highlands of Abys¬ 
sinia. What a triumph for Christendom if the Portuguese 
could occupy the valley of this western Nile, effect a juncture 
with the Christian kingdom of Abyssinia, and thus encircle 
the Moslems of Africa! It might be that Jerusalem could thus 
be recovered. Furthermore, it was believed that slaves were to 
be had for the taking on the Ghana or “Guinea” coast. A 
ready market for slaves was to be found among the grandees 
of Portugal and Spain, for much land lay empty as a result of 
the long wars. The thought that the state of slavery would be 
far outweighed by the blessing of conversion to Christianity 
quieted all qualms on that score. 

For nearly half a century Prince Henry labored at his task. 
Bigger and stronger ships were built to withstand the heavier 
seas of the Atlantic, and the square-rigged sailship displaced 
the Mediterranean galley. Genoese navigators were employed, 
and western Europe was ransacked for map-makers and mathe¬ 
maticians. As stepping stones to the south the Canary, Madeira, 
Azores, and Cape Verde islands were occupied and colonized. 
Most of these island groups had long been known by Euro- 


EUROPE FACES ABOUT 


585 


peans but they had lain neglected. The mouth of the Senegal 
was reached at last and gold and ivory as well as slaves were 
brought back to Portugal. Plans were laid to build churches 
and to divide the land into parishes. Not much progress had 
been made in colonizing the mainland, however, when Prince 
Henry died (1460). The efforts of his later years had been 
concentrated on completing the colonization of the Azores. 
The beginnings of Portuguese expansion under the leadership 
of Prince Henry inaugurated a new epoch in European his¬ 
tory. Ere the close of the century Portuguese sailors had rounded 
the southern tip of Africa and reached India; while another 
sailor, long in the Portuguese service, had adopted the bolder 
if less arduous course of reaching India by sailing westward. 
Europe had faced about and her overseas expansion had begun. 

For Further Study 

Cambridge Modern History, I, chaps. 3 and 8 
R. Lodge, The Close of the Middle Ages, chaps. 20 and 21 
J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of Europe in the Later 
Middle Ages, chaps. 14 and 15 
C. E. Chapman, The History of Spain 
M. A. S. Hume, The Spanish People 
R. Altamira, A History of Spanish Civilization 
R. P. A. Dozy, Spanish Islam 
H. E. Watts, The Christian Recovery of Spain 
R. B. Merriman, Rise of the Spanish Empire, vol. I 
H. M. Stephens, Portugal 

F. Schevill, History of the Balkan Peninsula, chaps. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 
and 15 

E. S. Creasy, History of the Ottoman Turks 
E. Pears, Fall of Constantinople 

A. H. Lybyer, “The Ottoman Turks and the Routes of Trade,” in the 
American Historical Review, October, 1915 
H. Brown, The Venetian Republic 
C. R. Beazley, Prince Henry the Navigator 


CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR 


THE RENASCENCE 

It is surely unnecessary, nowadays, to insist that the Renas¬ 
cence was no sudden turning on of the light after some centuries 
of darkness. There was plenty of light in the middle ages. There 
was indeed a great advance in culture during the later middle 
ages; but earlier mediaeval centuries had seen intellectual awak¬ 
enings too. We speak of the Carolingian Renascence, the 
Twelfth Century Renascence, and so on. So important was the 
intellectual awakening of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, 
however, that it is doubtless proper to refer to it as the Renas¬ 
cence. A more suitable chapter heading would be, simply, 
“the civilization of the later middle ages”, or, better still, 
“the transition from mediaeval civilization to modern”. 

The Renascence a Revolt 

The Renascence was a revolt. It was the mediaeval idea, 
as we have learned, that as there was one God in Heaven so 
there should be one divinely established government for His 
children here below. That government was, primarily, the 
church. We have seen with what vigor and with what skill 
the church strove through the centuries to root herself in the 
loyalties of men. And she succeeded. No state could stand 
against the church. Even the empire, which had presumed to 
share in the administration of the divinely established govern¬ 
ment, had been “taught its place” by the middle of the thir¬ 
teenth century. Civilization itself was consciously shaped 
towards ends chosen by the church. The learning, the art, and 
the literature of Europe were but channels through which the 
church poured forth her teachings to the sons of men. 

The revolt began in the fourteenth century. New nation¬ 
states developed self-consciousness and challenged the political 
authority of the papacy. The national revolt became wide- 

586 


THE RENASCENCE 


587 


spread in the Age of the Councils, as we have seen, and national 
patriotism began to displace ecclesiastical patriotism. The 
development of nationalities, indeed, was destined to become 
one of the main features of modern history. But there was re¬ 
volt all along the line, in the fourteenth century. In the field 
of learning, scholasticism, which had devoted itself to forti¬ 
fying the dogmas of the church, was challenged by humanism 
with its unashamed interest in nature and in human nature. 
In art, flat and formal representations of saints were replaced 
by the rounded forms of living humans; and architects began 
to lavish their artistic talent on palaces as well as churches. 
In literature the “Divine Comedy” of Dante was replaced 
by the very human comedy of Boccaccio. “The discovery of 
the world and of man” is a definition of the Renascence which 
well expresses the increased interest which men began to take 
in themselves and in worldly affairs. 

Emphasis on Individualism 

Another major emphasis of the Renascence was the freedom 
of the individual, the growth of which was destined to become 
another great feature of modern history. In the middle ages 
the significance of a man lay not in his personality but in his 
relationships. In a feudal society, for example, the proper ques¬ 
tion would be not who are you, but whose man are you. There 
were no “rights of the individual” in mediaeval society. If 
a man had rights he had them because he belonged to the no¬ 
bility, to the priesthood, to a gild, to a university, to a certain 
manor, and so on. Even the right of burial in consecrated ground 
depended upon one’s “belonging” to a certain parish. 

In the fourteenth century an increasing number of individuals 
sought to free themselves from this close bondage to their 
fellows. The cities of northern Italy began “to swarm with 
individuality”. Men sought new modes of self-expression. In 
an excess of zeal, inspired by the discovery of latent powers 
within them, some of the more gifted Italians set out to master 
all the arts and to absorb all the elements of culture. The con¬ 
cept of universal genius, Vuomo universale , became popular. 
Most of us feel, especially in our adolescent years, that we 


588 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


can do anything, and do it well. Such was the genius of the Ital¬ 
ians of the Renascence that they may be said to have achieved 
this ambition, in a number of instances. Among the more 
familiar examples of many-sided genius are those of Alberti, 
Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo. A notable expression 
of the individualism of the Renascence, by a contemporary, 
is the “Oration on the Dignity of Man,” of Pico della Miran- 
dola. “To thee alone is given a growth and a development 
depending on thine own free will,” he says. “Thou bearest 
in thee the germs of a universal life.” In Florence individual¬ 
ism was carried to the point of eccentricity and by 1390 there 
was no longer any one fashion of dress among the men. Each 
man sought to “affirm his personality” by dressing in a fashion 
of his own, making as many changes as his moods required or 
his money allowed. 

The Renascence was Italian in Origin 

The Renascence was European-wide, but it received its 
earliest, its fullest, and its more characteristic expression in 
Italy. The Italian peninsula was at the cross-roads of mediaeval 
civilization as of mediaeval commerce. Roman, Byzantine, and 
Moslem civilizations had each made characteristic contributions 
to the mediaeval culture of Italy. To these should be added the 
culture of the north of Europe, which made its way into Italy 
along the trade routes through the Alps. Romance cycles and 
Gothic art had found a welcome in the cities of northern Italy. 

Further, the Renascence was a “city child”, and the Italian 
cities were the oldest and the wealthiest in Europe. There had 
come to be a large number of “old” families of great wealth in 
the cities of northern Italy. Thus there was a class in Italy 
with the means and the leisure to give free rein to self-ex¬ 
pression. Fighting and love-making drew the attention of all 
and absorbed the energies of not a few of the “idle rich,” 
but there were others who began to collect manuscripts and 
to practice the arts, or encourage others to do so. Finally, the 
Renascence brought an increased interest in classical cul¬ 
ture, as we shall see, and Italy, far more than any other land 
in western Europe, was strewn with the monuments of classical 


THE RENASCENCE 


589 


civilization. Indeed, the traditions and even the pursuit of clas¬ 
sical studies had never quite died out in the Italian peninsula. 

The Revival of Classical Studies 

We may now examine one by one the various features of 
this civilization of the later middle ages upon which tradition 
has fastened the name of Renascence. First there was a revival 
of enthusiasm for classical culture. Men who were in revolt 
against mediaeval institutions, who were denouncing the stand¬ 
ards of their day, turned to the life and culture of classical 
antiquity for support and inspiration. Of a self-reliant and 
inquiring turn of mind themselves, these rebels found in Cicero 
and in Plato, to name but two, men of like minds. Seeking to 
rid their minds of mediaevalism the leaders of the Renascence 
found in the classical writers men whose minds had never been 
mediaeval. Cicero and Plato are “modern”; their writings 
are informed by a “scientific spirit”, that is, by a determina¬ 
tion to push an inquiry as far as the mind can carry it, over¬ 
riding all conventions, inhibitions, and taboos. The best “ de¬ 
fense” for classical studies to-day is, simply, that through them 
we ourselves will become more modern. 

Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) or Petrarch has been called 
the first modern scholar and even the first modern man. A Flor¬ 
entine, Petrarch gained many enthusiastic followers, first in 
his native city and then throughout Italy. He taught that 
the classics should be studied for their literary and cultural 
values. Mediaeval scholars had been far too prone to take a 
practical view of their classical studies, perfecting themselves 
in the use of Latin with a view to professional advancement 
and not as a means of studying the life of classical antiquity. 
Petrarch introduced a new spirit into scholarship, studying 
the classics for the fun of it. “My tireless spirit pores over the 
pages,” he writes, “until it has exhausted both fingers and eyes 
and yet I feel neither hunger nor cold but would seem to be 
reclining on the softest down. I labor while I rest and find my 
rest in labor.” Petrarch became an enthusiastic student of 
classical archaeology and a collector of manuscripts and coins. 
Cicero was his favorite author and Petrarch strove to perfect 


590 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


himself in an elegant classical style, in contrast to the debased 
“professional” style so common among his fellow clergy. The 
changing temper of the times is revealed by the fact that Pe¬ 
trarch’s teachings were immensely popular. He was extrava¬ 
gantly welcomed and feted everywhere he went and he may be 
said to have achieved the position in his own day of “intellec¬ 
tual arbiter of Europe.” 

The collecting and copying of manuscripts, the study of 
Roman remains, and the unearthing of classical sculptures 
soon became a major passion among Italians, and remained so 
to the close of the middle ages. There was not an Italian prince 
or noble, indeed scarcely a cardinal or pope, who did not de¬ 
vote energy and fortune to this fascinating pursuit. A class 
of professional scholars grew up whose talents were ever in 
demand among the wealthy patrons. They ransacked the mon¬ 
asteries not only of Italy but of Switzerland, of Germany, and 
of France in their search for neglected masterpieces of classical 
literature. Letters of Cicero, treatises of Quintilian and of 
Pliny, histories of Livy and of Tacitus were “discovered”. 
The libraries of Constantinople were brought under requisition 
and hundreds of Greek manuscripts found their way into west¬ 
ern Europe. Great collections began to be formed, such as 
that of the Medici in Florence and of the Vatican at Rome. 
Pope Nicholas V founded the latter with the gift of five thou¬ 
sand manuscripts. An especially enthusiastic and successful 
collector was a papal secretary named Poggio Bracciolini. He 
had had a fine training in both Latin and Greek and his duties 
carried him on journeys north of the Alps during the years 
when the Council of Constance was sitting. Convinced that 
there must be many manuscripts of great value lying forgotten 
in monastic libraries, this scholar succeeded in finding twelve 
of the comedies of Plautus, two of Cicero’s orations, and a 
complete edition of Quintilian. Such finds to such a scholar 
must have been thrilling indeed. 

A special feature of the renewed interest in the classics was 
a revival of the study of Greek. The knowledge of Greek had 
practically died out in western Europe. Boccaccio, friend 
and contemporary of Petrarch, is accounted the first Italian 


THE RENASCENCE 


591 


to have learned Greek. Yet if the young enthusiasts who 
were at war with medievalism found solace and support in 
Latin literature, still more would they find them in Greek litera¬ 
ture. A Byzantine scholar named Manuel Chrysoloras taught 
Greek at Florence, Milan, and Venice toward the end of the 
fourteenth century and wrote a Greek grammar much used 
thereafter. With this teacher the modern study of Greek may 
be said to have begun not only in Italy but also in the western 
world. And its end is not yet. With their emphasis upon a 
free spirit of inquiry in science, upon a range of philosophical 
speculation that knows no limit, and upon the love of the 
beautiful in every aspect of life the Greeks still have much 
to teach the world. An immediate consequence of the revival 
of Greek was the weakening of scholasticism. It was plain 
that many of the premises of the scholastics were based upon 
mistranslations of Aristotle as derived from Arabic sources. 
There was, indeed, a general revolt from the “empire of Aris¬ 
totle.” The works of Plato were translated, and a Platonic 
cult sprang up. Aristotle was logical, dogmatic, prosaic. Plato 
was imaginative, idealistic, poetic. Platonic Academies were 
established, and many enthusiasts made the teachings of the 
“great humanist” their rule of life. 

It should be remarked that the universities were not too 
friendly to the “new learning.” After all, the mediaeval uni¬ 
versities were themselves the creations of mediaevalism and 
it was but natural that they should be strongholds of the old 
order. As strongholds of the new learning a number of “acad¬ 
emies” were founded. These were voluntary associations of 
learned men. The first was the Platonic Academy of Florence, 
founded by Cosimo de’ Medici in 1438. Pico della Mirandola, 
Alberti, and Michelangelo were among its more famous mem¬ 
bers. Other academies were established in Rome, Naples, 
and Venice. Similar societies were established in the cities 
north of the Alps, later on. Associations of learned men whose 
objectives are to search out and to publish as widely as possible 
new truths and new facts in every field of knowledge now con¬ 
stitute one of the most important as well as the most encourag¬ 
ing features of our times. 


592 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


Far more important than the founding of academies as a 
means of advancing the new learning was the invention of 
printing. The greatly increased demand for manuscripts made 
it certain that some ingenious person would hit upon a device 
for “mass production.” In fact, several inventors did so al¬ 
most simultaneously. A certain Laurence Koslar first printed 
from wood blocks about 1440. John Gutenberg came much 
nearer modern practice when he printed from metal type at 
Mainz about 1450. The invention spread with a swiftness that 
was astonishing for those days. Within a quarter of a century 
there were printing presses in every country of western Europe, 
and some 30,000 editions had been issued by the end of the 
century. The Italians seized upon the German invention with 
especial eagerness, as might be expected. Venice became the 
first great European center of the book trade. There were 
more than 200 presses in that city, by 1500, and over 3000 
editions had been issued. 

The most famous of the early “publishing houses” was that 
of Aldo Manuzio, who settled in Venice in 1490. His books were 
noted for their scholarship, their beauty, their convenience, 
and their cheapness. Aldo made friends for his firm by making 
his books small enough to be easily handled. He published 
critical editions of practically all the masterpieces of Greek 
literature and sold them for about twenty-five cents a copy 
in our money. He published notable works in Latin also and 
to him we owe the introduction of the Italic type so familiar 
nowadays, a cursive type said to have been modeled on Pe¬ 
trarch’s handwriting. The whole world is in debt to the early 
Italian printers for substituting for the black Gothic type of 
the German printers the lighter and more easily legible Roman 
type still in use. Coming at the time it did, print became the 
“circulating medium of culture”. Copies of manuscripts 
could now be multiplied indefinitely. The price of books was 
cut by four-fifths and their circulation enormously increased. 
What printing has meant, and means, for the advancement of 
civilization is beyond calculation. 

With one exception the names of the scholars of the Renas¬ 
cence are scarcely known to-day. This is not to say that their 


THE RENASCENCE 


593 


work was unimportant, but they were pioneers in a new field, 
new to the medieval world at least, and later scholars by en¬ 
tering into their labors have surpassed them. The exception is 
Lorenzo Valla (d. 1457). His work on “The Refinements of 
the Latin Language”, which was republished sixty times in as 
many years, marks the highest point reached in the critical 
study of Latin during the Renascence. But Lorenzo is even 
more famous as the founder of historical criticism. In 1440, 
while in the employ of the king of Naples, then at odds with 
the pope, Lorenzo convincingly demonstrated the spurious 
character of the celebrated “Donation of Constantine”. A 
few years later a great scholar became pope in the person of 
Nicholas V. He summoned Valla to Rome as a secretary in 
the papal court, thus inaugurating that close alliance between 
the papacy and the new learning that endured to the Reforma¬ 
tion. Valla continued his exposure of historical frauds under 
papal patronage, correcting mistranslations in the Vulgate and 
stamping as worthless the popular accounts of the origin of 
the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed. 

The Age of Discoveries 

The interest of the men of the later middle ages in classical 
culture was easily equaled by their interest in geography. Taken 
in its largest sense as the knowledge of the earth and its re¬ 
sources and relationships, geography is the mother of all the 
physical sciences. So great were the advances made in this 
realm in the later middle ages that the period has been named 
“the Age of Discoveries”. The geographical knowledge of the 
ancient world had been summed up by the Hellenistic scholar 
Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria in the third century of the 
Christian era, as we have seen. No field of knowledge had 
fallen into more complete neglect during the early middle ages. 
“Bible geography” dominated men’s thought and on such maps 
as there were the earth was represented as a circle with Jeru¬ 
salem as the center and an ocean peopled by unknown terrors 
on every side. From the fall of Rome to the thirteenth century 
Europeans made no contributions whatever to the knowledge 
of the earth on which we live. A great forward step was taken 


594 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


in the thirteenth century, however, and with that century the 
Age of Discoveries must be understood as having begun. 

The conquests of Genghiz Khan and his successors had re¬ 
sulted in the establishment of a vast overland empire stretching 
from China to Russia, as we have seen. Traders and mis¬ 
sionaries from western Europe were tolerated and even wel¬ 
comed by the officials of the Great Khan. The accounts of 
these travelers circulated throughout the West, and with the 
invention of printing western scholars became fairly familiar 
with the geography of central Asia. By far the most famous 
of the Asiatic “explorers” was the Venetian Marco Polo (1254- 
1324). Having made his way to the capital of the Great Khan 
as a young man in the company of his two uncles, who were 
merchants of Venice, Marco won the favor of the authorities 
and entered their service. For twenty years he traveled through 
the length and breadth of the Mongol empire and beyond, 
visiting Burma, Siam, Cochin-China, Ceylon, Java, Sumatra, 
Madagascar, and Abyssinia. Returning at length to his native 
city, he was drawn into the never ceasing wars between Venice 
and Genoa. Captured and held a prisoner, Marco whiled away 
the time by relating his travels to a fellow prisoner, who had the 
good sense to give them to the world. This book, Marco Polo’s 
“Travels”, is the most famous travel book of the middle ages. 

But the greatest triumphs of geography were won not on 
the land but on the sea. Improvements in the science of navi¬ 
gation were so numerous and so important in the later middle 
ages as to be revolutionary. The Mediterranean was the nurs¬ 
ery of the “new navigation”. The compass, known to Euro¬ 
peans in a rudimentary form in the twelfth century, was rapidly 
improved in the hands of Italian sailors. Ships could now launch 
boldly forth toward their objective, no longer restrained to 
coasting along familiar shores. Improvements were made in 
the art of measuring time and of calculating latitude and longi¬ 
tude. The scientific knowledge of the Arabs had long been 
familiar to the Italians, and to this they added their own ex¬ 
perience and such scraps of ancient learning as they possessed. 
Ere long the Italians began to prepare maps of the coasts with 
which they had become so familiar. These maps were known 


THE RENASCENCE 


595 


as port guides or portulani. They are the first maps, in the 
modern sense, in European history. By 1350 these port guides 
showed the whole of the Mediterranean coastline with almost 
modern accuracy. Enterprising sailors, and especially the 
Genoese, then began to push westward into the Atlantic. The 
prospect of profit in trade with regions yet unknown was sufficient 
to lure them on once the science of navigation made it reason¬ 
ably certain they could find their way back. The northw est coast 
of Africa was explored for a few hundred miles, and the Canary 
and Madeira islands were discovered. Finally the Azores were 
reached, 750 miles west of Portugal, or one-third of the way to 
America; and all this by the middle of the fourteenth century. 

During the fifteenth century the new navigation gained im¬ 
petus from two sources, the classical revival and the expansion 
of Portugal. Among the hundreds of manuscripts uncovered, 
copied, and finally broadcast by the printing press were works 
by classical authors on mathematics, astronomy, and other 
aids to navigation. The scientific knowledge of the ancient 
world was thus made known, completely and widely. The num¬ 
ber of scientific scholars increased greatly. Trigonometry came 
generally into use, and a knowledge of its principles is essential 
to the scientific map maker. Ptolemy’s Geographica was printed. 
His insistence upon the sphericity of the earth and his calcula¬ 
tion, or rather miscalculation, of its size became commonplaces 
of scientific information. German mathematicians were es¬ 
pecially notable and about the middle of the fifteenth century 
two of them, Purbach of Vienna and Regiomontanus (as Johann 
Muller preferred to call himself) of Nuremberg published notable 
summaries of the mathematical and astronomical knowledge 
of their day. Navigators eagerly seized upon these products 
of the printing press. Columbus carried German astronomical 
tables in his chart house. 

y/We have traced the beginnings of Portuguese expansion 
in an earlier chapter. At the death of Prince Henry the Portu¬ 
guese had followed the coast of Africa southward to the tenth 
parallel of latitude, north of the Equator. It is doubtful whether 
the famous prince ever dreamed of going farther south. After 
Henry’s death, however, the Portuguese sailors, from their 




596 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


bases on the west coast of Africa, began to push farther and 
ever farther to the south. In the quarter century following 
the death of Prince Henry three times as many miles of the 
African coast were charted as in the prince’s whole lifetime. 
In 1486 Bartolomeo Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope and 
landed on the southern coast of Africa. The whole purpose 
of the Portuguese was transformed, for it was now clear that 
the great eastern trade was within easy reach. 

Nowhere may we see the transition from mediaeval to modern 
more clearly than in the changing viewpoint of the Portuguese 
in the quarter century following the death of Prince Henry. 
Not the founding of a crusader’s state in Africa but the open¬ 
ing of a new trade route to Asia became the goal of Portuguese 
policy} The news of the successful voyage of Diaz effected 
something like a revolution in European thought. It was evi¬ 
dent that the mediaeval world had burst through its shell and 
that Europe stood upon the brink of changes of unknowable 
magnitude. The professor of classical literature at Florence, 
Politian, wrote a flowery letter of congratulation to the king 
of Portugal saying something very like this. It was a graceful 
tribute of the “new learning” to the “new navigation”. 

But while some were pushing ever farther to the south in the 
attempt to round Africa to the east, others were sailing directly 
westward into the Atlantic^/ The notion that the east could 
be reached by way of the west was some eighteen centuries 
old. It had never been completely lost sight of even in the 
middle ages. The revival of classical learning had brought a 
renewed interest in the westward route, and the scientists of 
the Renascence gave the matter much thought. Following 
Ptolemy the map makers of the fifteenth century drew their 
world much too small, making it appear that Asia was but a 
few days’ sail westward from Lisbon; various islands were 
indicated as half-way stations, moreover; the existence of the 
American continents was not even dreamed of. In 1474 a famous 
map of this sort was brought to the Portuguese capital. It was 
the work of the Italian Toscanelli, the greatest physicist of 
his day. Similar maps were in the hands of sailors and students 
of navigation in Spain, France, and England. 


THE RENASCENCE 


597 


The sensational success of the Portuguese in rounding Africa 
set Europe fairly ablaze with excitement) If Asia could be 
reached by rounding Africa how much more easily could it be 
reached by sailing to the west, for the Cape of Good Hope was 
a good three months’ sail of more than 4000 miles from Portu¬ 
gal, and even then India was far away. Sailors from Portuguese, 
Spanish, and English ports scoured the Atlantic, searching, in 
the first place, for the mysterious islands which should serve 
as half-way stations. 

Cristoforo Colombo, a Genoese sailor, had gone to Portugal 
as a youth, drawn thither like so many of his race by the sea¬ 
faring enterprise of the western kingdom. He married a Portu¬ 
guese wife and took part, year after year, in the exploration of 
the African coastHe also made voyages to Bristol, in the 
west of England, and followed the trade route of the Bristol 
sailors to Iceland and beyond. There were few men who under¬ 
stood the navigation of the Atlantic, north and south, as did 
this Genoese sailor. Well versed in the theory of the western 
route Columbus resolved to sail boldly westward to Asia with¬ 
out bothering to look for the elusive islands which were sup¬ 
posed to mark the way. His plan called for a minimum of 
three ships with provisions for a year. It remained to get fi¬ 
nancial backing for what was destined to be “the most daring 
and brilliant feat of seamanship on record.” The story of the 
negotiations of Columbus with Portugal, Genoa, England, and 
Spain, and of his final success, is one of the most familiar in 
history, and need not be retold here. It will be recognized, of 
course, that the discovery of America was really due to the 
maritime enterprise of the Portuguese and that the winning of 
the honor by Spain was accidental. 

Spain’s success, in 1492, in finding what was apparently a 
western route to Asia inspired the Portuguese to push their 
own project to completion, and in 1498 Vasco da Gama reached 
India, a voyage more arduous if less brilliant than that of 
Columbus. The Portuguese cargo on the return voyage con¬ 
sisted of pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmegs, and precious 
stones; and it was sold at a profit of six hundred per cent! 
Meanwhile English sailors had caught the fever. The merchants 


598 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


of Bristol had long carried on a flourishing trade with Iceland. 
Learning of the existence of a “Vineland” far to the west, 
Bristol sailors began to scour the northern Atlantic in search 
of it. Learning of the English interest in westward exploration, 
Columbus had sent his brother to England to secure the back¬ 
ing of the king. An invitation to visit England and talk things 
over reached Columbus, finally, just as he was signing his agree¬ 
ment with the Spanish sovereigns. The brilliant success of 
Columbus stirred the English to employ a Venetian sailor 
named Cabot to lead a western expedition, and following the 
old Norse route Cabot landed on the shores of Labrador in 
1497. 

The famous voyages of Columbus, da Gama, and Cabot 
brought the long Age of Discoveries to a brilliant climax. The 
significance of these exploits in the history of Europe can scarcely 
be exaggerated. The discovery of America was followed by the 
colonial expansion of Europe in the new world. The voyage 
of da Gama was the prelude to the maritime and commercial 
expansion of Europe in the old world. Well-nigh the whole 
world has been Europeanized. 

Renascence Art 

Notable as were the achievements of the men of the Renas¬ 
cence in discoveries, their achievements in art were scarcely 
less notable. The products of Renascence art constitute the 
most important single contribution to the artistic heritage of 
the western world. We may begin with architecture, mother 
of the fine arts. In no aspect of its culture had Italy shown 
greater variety, in the middle ages, than in architecture. By¬ 
zantine, Norman, Saracen, Lombard, and Northern, or Gothic, 
schools had each had a following in various parts of the penin¬ 
sula. Some of the loveliest buildings in Italy date from the 
period before the Renascence. Among such are the Byzantine 
cathedral of St. Mark, Venice, the Gothic duomo of Milan, the 
Romanesque cathedral and Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the 
Gothic campanile or bell tower of Florence. For ten centuries, 
however, no Italian architect had thought of imitating the 
buildings whose ruins were so plainly to be seen on every hand. 


THE RENASCENCE 


599 


Indeed, as we have seen, mediaeval builders were more likely 
to use the Graeco-Roman ruins as quarries than as models. 

The revival of enthusiasm for classical culture engendered 
a revival of enthusiasm for classical architecture. Architects 
became archaeologists and studied the ruined arches and broken 
columns with passionate eagerness. They began by borrowing 
decorative designs. In Florence, during the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries, the wealthy nobles were busily building 
palaces. Palaces were fortresses as well as places of residence 
in those days. Inspired by their love of classical models, the 
architects of Florence began to refine the rugged palaces. 
Dressed stone was used in the upper stories, the windows were 
enlarged and made more decorative, and cornices of great 
beauty were added. In the interior of the palaces the archi¬ 
tects had a free hand and their love of the antique found full 
scope. Rows of columns and pilasters were introduced, with 
capitals of the classical orders. The beginnings of Renascence 
architecture can best be seen to-day in the Florentine palaces 
of the fifteenth century. 

It is noteworthy that Renascence architecture produced 
more secular buildings than churches, though this does not 
mean that Renascence churches were unimportant. But even 
the churches of the Renascence seemed to be built primarily 
for the use and delight of man here and now, rather than, as 
in Gothic, to point him to the skies. In the secular buildings 
of the Renascence there is a square-cut character which sug¬ 
gests that the architect wished to give the occupant easy access 
to a maximum floor space. The ample and commodious colo¬ 
nial dwelling so familiar in New England is a Renascence design 
done in wood. But beauty as well as utility marks the build¬ 
ings of the Italian Renascence. It is clear that the artists were 
highly pleased with themselves and with their work. Details 
of decoration fascinated them, calling forth a “ loving conscien¬ 
tiousness’ J in their execution. It is significant in this connec¬ 
tion that most of the early architects began as sculptors. 

How far were Renascence architects indebted to classical 
art? Many of them professed to be slavish imitators, conscien¬ 
tious copiers, of classical models. In decorative designs there 


600 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


was much of exact reproduction, it is true. But this was but 
a beginning. Renascence architecture was a fresh expression 
of inventive genius. It was classical in spirit, however, in its 
emphasis upon symmetry and proportion, its refinement of de¬ 
sign, and its avoidance of the exaggerated and the bizarre. 

We have space here for mention of but two or three of 
the many architects of genius. The first of these is Brunelles¬ 
chi (1376-1446). Defeated in the famous competition of the 
bronze doors of the Florentine Baptistery, in 1401, the young 
sculptor left for Rome where he plunged into an enthusiastic 
study of Roman remains. He returned to Florence in 1403 
and this year is commonly accepted as the birth year of Renas¬ 
cence architecture. Brunelleschi’s greatest achievement was 
the rearing of the dome of the cathedral of Florence, a task 
that had baffled architects for half a century. More completely 
expressive of Brunelleschi’s art, however, is the little chapel 
he built for the Pazzi family in the cloisters of the great Fran¬ 
ciscan church of Santa Croce in Florence. This is the first struc¬ 
ture completely and consistently Renascence throughout to 
be built in Italy. No little of its attractiveness derives from 
the sculptures of Donatello and della Robbia which adorn it. 
Brunelleschi also submitted designs for the new palace which 
Cosimo de’ Medici was planning to erect and in which he pro¬ 
posed to house his library of manuscripts and his other classical 
treasures. He was not successful, for the wealthy and culti¬ 
vated Florentine preferred the designs of a rival. 

Next to Brunelleschi in his influence upon the development 
of architecture in the fifteenth century was Alberti (1404- 
1472). The Ruccelai palace, which he built about 1450, has 
in it none but Roman elements. Alberti shaped architectural 
growth not so much through his buildings, however, as through 
his writings. He wrote, in all, ten books on the art of building. 
After Alberti the architectural center of Italy was transferred 
from Florence to Rome. This was chiefly the work of the great 
architect Bramante (1444-1514). Beginning his artistic career 
as a painter, Bramante turned to architecture and won a 
reputation in Milan. Going to Rome, he was engaged by Pope 
Julius I (1503-1513) as the architect for the new St. Peter’s. 


THE RENASCENCE 


601 


Bramante’s design was, in his own view, strictly classical. 
“I want to raise the Roman Pantheon on the vaults of the 
Temple of Peace”, he said. Actually he designed a building 
such as the Romans had never built and indeed could never 
have built. Bramante died a few years after the first stone was 
laid, but he had lived long enough to make sure that a large 
part of his plan would be carried out. Even in its lessened form 
St. Peter’s has proved to be “the greatest work of modern 
times.” 

Renascence sculpture shows that the artists were studying 
antiquity and also that they were studying nature. We have 
seen that northern sculptors of the thirteenth century, in their 
zeal to make their work worthy of the new cathedrals, had been 
inspired to go directly to nature for their models and had 
wrought in stone the flowers and the foliage of the countryside 
with a skill that amounted to genius. The human figure also 
was represented with much realism and in easy and natural 
poses, though always draped. Northern realism made its way 
southward over the Alps and its advent is considered by some 
scholars to mark the beginning of Renascence sculpture in 
Italy. From classical models the Italians learned the limits 
within which the portrayal of nature may be successfully at¬ 
tempted. 

The first important sculptor of the Italian Renascence was 
Lorenzo Ghiberti. A native of Florence, Ghiberti won the com¬ 
petition already alluded to and became the sculptor of the 
famous bronze doors of the Baptistery in Florence. The in¬ 
fluence of ancient art is clearly to be seen in this work, but it 
is not yet dominant. Ghiberti’s love of nature and of the beauti¬ 
ful in nature is shown in the charming frieze of fruits, foliage, 
and animals on the door casings. “I have always sought for 
first principles,” Ghiberti wrote, “as to how nature works 
in herself and how I may approach her.” 

The full tide of the Renascence appears in the work of a much 
greater sculptor, Donatello (1386-1466). In his works the 
love of nature and of ancient art both appear in full measure. 
Donatello spent some time in Rome, returning to Florence in 
the company of Brunelleschi. His principal works still remain 


602 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


in his native city. Of these the most famous is his marble statub 
of St. George, whose face and figure express to the full the self- 
confidence and the restless enquiring energy of the Renascence. 
At Padua is Donatello’s statue of the Italian soldier of fortune 
Gattamelata. This superb work, which portrays a powerful 
and spirited horse mounted by a rider of “commanding attitude 
and thoughtful, energetic face”, reveals the influence of an¬ 
tiquity and of the study of nature in a perfect blending. It is 
the first great equestrian statue since the fall of Rome. Dona¬ 
tello is also the first sculptor of the Renascence to represent 
the nude figure in the round. 

The greatest sculptor of the Renascence, and indeed the 
greatest since the Greeks, was that many-sided genius Michel¬ 
angelo (1475-1564). His early works show how strongly he 
was influenced by Donatello. Later on Michelangelo’s genius 
expressed itself in a manner that is of no period or school 
but which is native to himself. It is true that the influence of 
ancient art remains strong in such works as his David and the 
Slaves. But Michelangelo’s figures have a power of suggesting 
repressed motion and suppressed emotion that may be searched 
for elsewhere in vain. Perhaps no other sculptor, ancient or 
modern, has attained such anatomical perfection in the por¬ 
trayal of the human body. In the hands of Michelangelo the 
human form became a musical instrument, sounding forth the 
sombre music of his soul. 

The greatest art of the Renascence was painting. The master¬ 
pieces of Italian painting are more familiar to us to-day than 
the masterpieces of classical literature. Mediaeval painting 
had been of little merit; it had never escaped from the twin 
bonds of ecclesiastical restraint and Byzantine formalism. The 
figures were not correctly drawn; they were forced into conven¬ 
tional but unnatural attitudes, and they were assembled in 
nicely balanced groups. Color was laid on lavishly but with little 
harmony. Landscapes where shown were without perspective. 

It has been remarked that the Renascence was a revolt, 
and in none of its diverse phases was this more true than in 
painting. Naturalness began to take the place of formalism. 
Figures were depicted as round rather than flat; drawing 


THE RENASCENCE 


603 


became much more accurate, and the laws of perspective were 
discovered and applied. The blending of colors and the use of 
light and shadow were studied. The perfecting of the smoothly- 
plastered wall made possible the development of fresco, and 
improvements in weaving enabled artists to paint in oils upon 
canvas. 

The development of Renascence painting is the most remark¬ 
able chapter in the whole history of art. It covers the two hun¬ 
dred and fifty years from Giotto to Michelangelo, during which 
the art of painting advanced from primitive beginnings to 
a Golden Age. There is space here for only the barest outline 
of this fascinating story; the merest mention can be made of 
the multitude of artists whose eager and strenuous activity 
has permanently enriched the world. The founder of Italian 
painting was Giotto (d. 1336). He was the great illustrator of 
the life and works of St. Francis. In his many frescoes, which 
still adorn the walls of the Franciscan churches of Florence, 
Assisi, and Padua, Giotto reveals himself as a supreme story¬ 
teller. It was his desire to tell his stories with full dramatic 
effect that led him to break with the conventions of mediae- 
valism. 

Giotto’s innovations were studied and elaborated by his 
followers for a full century. Then came a genius whose work 
completely revolutionized the art of painting. He is known 
as Masaccio. Born in 1401, he painted his masterpieces between 
the ages of twenty and twenty-six. These are frescoes illustrat¬ 
ing stories of the Bible, painted on the walls of the Carmelite 
church in Florence. With the inspiration of genius, Masaccio 
succeeded in painting things the way they look. He saw that 
in nature form and mass are not defined by lines but by color, 
light, and shadow. He saw also that distant objects are not 
only smaller but less clearly defined. These are the fundamen¬ 
tal principles of modern painting. The broad effects achieved 
by Masaccio in representing naturalness were elaborated by 
his successors during the next half-century. Some studied per¬ 
spective, others the use of light and shadow ( chiaroscuro ), still 
others the blending of colors. Fra Filippo Lippi (d. 1469) de¬ 
voted himself to portraying the beauty to be found in common 


604 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


folks. Botticelli (d. 1510) so far escaped from medievalism as 
to illustrate classical themes, so popular among the highly 
cultured Florentines of his day. All the Italian artists of the 
period were in love with life, as is shown by their delight in 
color and their “love of the look of things”. 

The great genius who summed up all the “experiments” 
into a complete whole and so founded the “grand style” of 
Italian painting was Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). He has 
been called “the finest intelligence that ever applied itself to 
the painter’s art.” His Last Supper, a much damaged fresco 
painted in 1498, is commonly considered “the most impressive 
painting in the world.” Leonardo’s subtlety in the use of light 
and shadow has never been equaled. His word to the imitators 
of Masaccio’s naturalism was “Choose the most gracious as¬ 
pects of reality.” 

To carry the story further would be to launch out into the 
Golden Age of Italian painting—the age of Raphael (1483- 
1520), of Michelangelo (1475-1564), of Correggio (1494-1534), 
of Titian (1489-1576), and of Tintoretto (1518-1594). This 
would carry us far into the sixteenth century and thus into 
modern times. 

The Revolution in Commerce and Industry 

The later middle ages brought great changes in the economic 
realm. Mediaeval economic organization had reached a high 
point of stability and efficiency. Agricultural pioneering had 
redeemed many thousands of acres of swamps and of forest 
land. The industry of artisans and the enterprise of merchants 
had combined to raise the standard of living. It is estimated 
that the population of western Europe, some 30,000,000 at 
the close of the fifth century, was 60,000,000 at the end of the 
thirteenth. 

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the mediaeval eco¬ 
nomic organisation broke down; and at the same time it was 
being reconstructed along lines which we call modern. Among 
the causes of the breakdown was the Black Death. Half the 
population of western Europe perished, causing serious eco¬ 
nomic dislocation and giving rise to permanent changes in the 


THE RENASCENCE 


605 


organisation of agriculture. Then came wars—the hundred 
years of conflict between England and France, the Hussite 
Wars in central Europe, and the unending strife among the 
cities of Italy. Every economic process is disturbed by war. 
Finally, in the fifteenth century, came a revolution in commerce 
through the closing of old trade routes and the opening of new 
ones. The rise of Poland and of Russia brought the decline of 
the Hanseatic League, and the discovery of a western way to 
India transferred much of the trade of the Mediterranean to 
the Atlantic. 

Economic reconstruction proceeded along two lines. First, 
industry and commerce were reorganized on the basis of capi¬ 
talism. Mediaeval men had a prejudice against people who 
got an income out of their wealth. This was due, in the main, 
to the fact that money was lent to finance wars and other un¬ 
productive enterprises. Obviously such loans were repaid very 
slowly and incompletely, so that interest charges were very 
high. Then, too, a considerable proportion of mediaeval money¬ 
lenders were Jews, who had taken up that profession in part 
at least because other means of livelihood were closed to them. 
Of course commerce had always afforded a limited field for 
capital; a man could invest his money in a cargo of merchan¬ 
dise, transport it to a distant point, and sell it at a profit. 

The rise of capitalism means the discovery of new ways of 
productively employing capital, and on a large scale. During 
the fourteenth century capitalists began to get a foothold in 
industry. In Florence, for example, there were important wool, 
silk, and cloth industries giving employment to thousands of 
workers. The workers were organized in gilds. It will be re¬ 
called that the gild has no place in its make-up for any one not 
actively engaged as a worker in the industry itself. Florentine 
merchants built up a market for Florentine products all over 
Europe, however. They became regular and large purchasers 
from the Florentine gilds. They were, therefore, in a position 
to dictate to the gilds in matters of quality, price, and output. 
In short, the merchants of Florence came to be capitalist- 
employers. The number of shops, and therefore of masters, 
was limited, and the number of apprentices increased greatly, 


606 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


as did the class of unskilled employees. Thus capital and labor 
became the basis of industry. From merchandising to banking 
is but a step and the Florentine merchants became bankers. 
The banking houses of Florence financed the princes and the 
prince-bishops of all Europe, in the fourteenth century. Much 
of modern banking practice derives from the methods of these 
early houses. Their interest charges varied from four per cent 
to 175 per cent, according to circumstances. The Florentine 
banking houses of the fourteenth century, the Riccardi, the 
Bardi, the Peruzzi, and others, were soon put in the shade by 
the Medici, however; when Cosimo de’ Medici died in 1440 he 
left a fortune of 225,000 gold florins. 

What happened in Florence was happening in other cities 
on both sides of the Alps. Capitalists were appearing everywhere. 
In Venice some 2000 merchant-princes owned most of the 
wealth; at Freiburg thirty-seven burgesses owned half the 
wealth of the city; at Basel four per cent of the population had 
nearly all the wealth. Jacques Coeur, a French merchant- 
prince of the fifteenth century, amassed a fortune of twenty- 
seven million francs. William de la Pole of England and the 
Fuggers, the Baumgartners, and the Hochstetters of Germany 
are other examples of fifteenth century millionaires. Individ¬ 
ualism was as characteristic of the economic life of the later 
middle ages as of the intellectual and artistic life of the times. 

The second line along which economic reconstruction pro¬ 
ceeded was the substitution of the nation for the city as the 
basis of industrial organisation and commercial policy. Here 
again Europe learned from Italy. Several of the Italian cities 
had become important territorial powers. The necessity of 
controlling their food supply explains their first expansion, 
and industrial and commercial rivalry carried the process fur¬ 
ther. Venice, Milan, and Florence were especially successful 
in their expansionist policies. The rulers of such states naturally 
thought of the economic problems of the state as a whole. 
To promote domestic industry, to extend foreign commerce, 
and to accumulate a treasure with which to carry on war were 
the objectives of all Italian rulers. The enactment of protective 
tariffs, the use of bounties and subsidies, the safeguarding of 


THE RENASCENCE 


607 


industrial processes, and the conquest of new sources of food 
supply and raw materials were some of their special policies. 
This mixture of politics and economics is known as mercantilism. 
Italian writers on statecraft helped to spread a knowledge of 
the theory and practice of mercantilism north of the Alps. At 
the close of the Hundred Years’ War Charles VII of France 
began to shape French economic policy along national lines. 
Italian bankers were dropped and native merchants favored. 
Jacques Coeur became the royal adviser and treasurer. Ed¬ 
ward IV of England began to drive foreigners out of English in¬ 
dustry and commerce, to organize English companies, and to 
build up English shipping. Not long thereafter the beginning 
of overseas expansion opened up opportunities for national 
enterprise on an unprecedented scale. 

The New Political Science 

Finally, the later middle ages brought important changes 
in the political realm. The new science of economics was 
matched by a new science of politics, and here also the Italians 
were the teachers of Europe. What Italy was in the fifteenth 
century Europe was to become. There were ten or a dozen 
states, in the peninsula, large and small. They no longer rec¬ 
ognized a common superior such as emperor or pope. Each 
state was against every other state, though there might be 
“Triple Alliances” and “Dual Ententes” from time to time. 
The only principles recognized in international relations were 
expediency, treachery, and force. Conquered states were held 
in helpless dependence. An art of statecraft and an art of diplo¬ 
macy had been developed and they were studied and prac¬ 
ticed by Italian rulers with as much “loving conscientiousness” 
as the contemporary art of architecture. Each ruler strove 
to make his authority absolute within his own dominions. Ital¬ 
ian concepts of statecraft, diplomacy, and international relations 
spread north of the Alps and are accountable for much of the 
selfish and ruthless nationalism that has characterized modern 
history. 

The Italian who more than any other succeeded in popular¬ 
izing the new political science was Machiavelli (1469-1527). 


608 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


He was a Florentine and had played a modest part in the gov¬ 
ernment of that state. Machiavelli wrote various treatises on 
the “Art of War” and other topics; but the work upon which 
his fame rests is “The Prince”, written in 1513. Machiavelli’s 
method was just the reverse of the mediaeval. He derived his 
principles of politics from the actual facts of experience and 
of history, and not from abstract principles. The experience 
to which Machiavelli appealed, when it was not that of his 
own time, was that of classical antiquity; mediaeval experience 
he ignored. 

Machiavelli seems to have intended his book as a practical 
manual for the guidance of the rulers of his day. His princi¬ 
ples of political action were mostly drawn from current Italian 
practice. He begins with the assertion, based upon experience, 
that men are born bad and that they will not do good unless 
obliged to do so. The essential quality of a ruler, then, is strength. 
Of course, a ruler should not neglect to win the love of his people, 
if he can, for it is good economy to do so; but he must not scruple 
to break a promise or to make use of cruelty. Those rulers who 
have not been over-scrupulous have fared best, he thinks. As 
for the state itself, when its peace and safety are in danger 
“no consideration of justice or injustice can find a place, nor 
any of mere cruelty, or of honor or disgrace; every scruple must 
be set aside and that plan followed which saves her life and 
maintains her independence.” A ruler must, therefore, have 
“no other design nor thought nor study than war and the arts 
and discipline of it.” 

Born in Italy, the new political science soon brought disaster 
to the land of its birth. The five “Great Powers” of the Italian 
peninsula, about 1450, were Venice, Milan, Florence, the Papal 
States, and the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily. Venice and 
Milan were bitter rivals in the north. The Republic of Venice 
was ruled by an oligarchy of merchant nobility in whose hands 
the doge was a mere puppet and under whose influence the 
populace “were systematically hypnotized into a state of utter 
indifference to real liberty.” The Duchy of Milan, a great ter¬ 
ritorial state covering most of Lombardy, had been governed 
for a century and a half by the Visconti family whose “supple 
























610 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


consciences and subtle brains” had sufficed not only to keep 
themselves in power but also to make the city of Milan the 
wealthiest in Italy. In 1450 the famous soldier of fortune 
Francesco Sforza, captain of the Milanese mercenaries and 
hero of a victory over Venice, married a daughter of the Vis¬ 
conti and became duke of Milan, as the first of a succession of 
Sforzas. The Republic of Florence was now an important ter¬ 
ritorial state in control of most of Tuscany. After generations 
of political turmoil in which the lesser gilds fought for political 
privileges, the wealthy Medici family gradually brought the 
Florentines under control. Cosimo de’ Medici (d. 1464), who 
preferred to pull wires from behind the scenes, was succeeded 
by his brilliant grandson Lorenzo (d. 1492) under whom Medici 
control was franker and more complete. 

In the Papal States also expansion and centralisation had 
been the order of the day. Successive popes of the fifteenth 
century devoted themselves to the task of reducing their petty 
barons to submission. The task was brought to completion, 
near the close of the century, by Cesare Borgia, who has the 
doubtful honor of being the model of Machiavelli’s “Prince”. 
In the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily one foreign dynasty after 
another established itself as the House of Aragon drove out 
the House of Anjou, which had driven out the Hohenstaufens. 
The House of Aragon built up a despotism as soulless and effi¬ 
cient as any in Italy. It is evident that one of the fifteenth 
century kings of Naples could have given lessons to Machia- 
velli, for we are informed that having been taken prisoner by 
the duke of Milan, his majesty persuaded the duke that it would 
be bad politics to keep him in prison. 

Among the five “Great Powers” of Italy there was no sem¬ 
blance of a common Italian patriotism. Florence and Venice 
united against Milan. Then, as the balance of power slowly 
shifted, a Triple Alliance of Milan, Naples, and Florence arose, 
in 1484, to “maintain peace” in the peninsula. Gravely threat¬ 
ened by this combination, the Venetians invited the young 
and eager Charles VIII of France to invade Italy. This mo¬ 
mentous step, the logical fruit of the new political science, 
was the beginning of the end of Italian liberty. Charles VIII 


THE RENASCENCE 


611 


conquered Naples, and his successor, Louis XII, conquered 
Milan. A particularly treacherous combination of enemies, 
Italian and foreign, attacked Venice in 1508 and, while they 
did not conquer her, succeeded in crippling her power perma¬ 
nently. Spain, meanwhile, had entered the Italian field in 
opposition to France. England strove to maintain a balance 
of power in Europe by throwing her weight first on one side 
and then on the other. It is evident that in the field of politics 
also we are now in touch with modern times. 

By the close of the fifteenth century, then, Europe had 
burst through her mediaeval confines, whether of learning, of 
geography, of art, or of economic and political organisation. 
Of course much that was old remained to be destroyed, and 
nearly all that was new was destined to be elaborated in ways 
as yet undreamt of. But the lines along which the development 
of European civilization was to take place were already clear. 
In learning the humanism and the scientific spirit of Renas- 
-cence scholars are not yet obsolete. In art the architects, the 
sculptors, and the painters of the Renascence are still our 
masters. European expansion overseas has not yet ceased; 
and capitalism still rules in the economic realm, though it is 
becoming a limited monarchy. Finally, the all-sufficient nation¬ 
state is still the dominant political unit, even though great 
strides have recently been made in the direction of international 
cooperation. 


For Further Study 

R. Lodge, The Close of the Middle Ages, chaps. 12, 13, 14, and 22 
G. B. Adams, Civilization during the Middle Ages, chap. 15 
Cambridge Modern History, I, chaps. 1, 2, 6, 15, and 16 

J. W. Thompson, Economic and Social History of Europe in the Later 
Middle Ages, chaps. 18, 19, and 22 
J. H. Randall, The Making of the Modern Mind, bk. 2 
J. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy 
J. A. Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy, 7 vols. 

J. H. Robinson and H. W. Rolfe, Petrarch the First Modern Scholar 
G. H. Putnam, Books and Their Makers in the Middle Ages 

S. Reinach, Apollo 

C. H. Moore, The Character of Renaissance Architecture 


£ p ^ ^ ^ 


612 


EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 


B. Berenson, Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance 

-, Florentine Painters of the Renaissance 

-, North Italian Painters of the Renaissance 

-, Venetian Painters of the Renaissance 

Sombart, The Quintessence of Capitalism 
J. Ashley, English Economic History , vol. I, pt. 2 
C. Abbott, Expansion of Europe 
R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, vol. Ill 
Villari, Life and Times of Niccolo Machiavelli 
Machiavelli, The Prince (Numerous translations) 





INDEX 

More important references are indicated by heavy type. 


Aachen, 71, 165, 236 
Abbassid dynasty, 188 
Abbot, 278; and see Monasticism 
Abelard, 390-391, 398, 406 - 408 , 411 
Abotrites, 227 
Abu Bekr, 187 
Abyssinia, 584 
Acre, 309, 311,313, 317, 322 
Acropolis of Athens, 14 
Adam of Cremona, 366 
Adelaide, queen of Lombardy, 233, 
234 

Ademar, bishop of Puy, 300, 306 

Adrianople, battle of, 65 

Adrianople, taken by the Turks, 577 

Adriatic Sea, 332, 581 

iEgean Sea, 12, 581 

iElfric of Wessex, 266 

JEneid , 28 

iEschylus, 17 

iEtius, 72, 74 

Africa, 185, 330; circumnavigation 
of, 595-596 

Agincourt, battle of, 521-522 
Agobard, 157 
Agricola, Julius, 252 
Agricola, of Tacitus, 252 
Agriculture, Roman, 32, 81, 252; 
early German, 50-51; Anglo- 
Saxon, 261-262; manorial, 212- 
223 , 510; monastic, 117-118, 397; 
in Moslem lands, 191-192 
Aids, feudal, 203-204 
Aistulf, king of the Lombards, 141, 
143 

Alaric, king of the West Goths, 33, 
61,.64 

Alberti, Leon Battista, 588, 591, 600 
Albi, 340, 393 

Albigensian Wars, 395, 441, 464-465 
Albigensians, 393, 544 
Albornoz, Cardinal, 536 
Alcuin of York, 157, 265 


Alemanni, 62, 124 
Alemannia, 139 
Aleppo, 303, 305, 310 
Alessandria, 337, 357 
Alexander the Great, conquests of, 
19 , 100 

Alexander III, Pope, 356, 357, 358 
Alexander V, 377, 542 
Alexandria, 19, 20, 333 
Alexius I, eastern emperor, 297, 300, 
302, 303, 318 

Alfred the Great, king of England, 
165, 172, 207, 227, 258 - 261 , 265 
Algebra, see Mathematics 
'Alphonse VIII, king of Castile, 481 
Alphonse X, 548 
Alps, 4, 331, 333, 552 
Amalfi, 309, 322, 330 
Ambrose, see St. Ambrose 
Amiens, county of, 461 
Anecdotes and fables, 427-428 
Angevin “empire”, 479 - 480 , 489 
Angles, 62, 71 

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 172, 431 
Anglo-Saxon literature, see Litera¬ 
ture 

Anglo-Saxons, 85-86, 253-256 
Angora, 577 

Anjou, county of, 242, 462, 463, 479 
Anjou, House of, 313, 532, 538, 610 
Annates, 534 
Anselm, see St. Anselm 
Antioch, 297, 303, 304-305, 311, 
314, 321; battle of, 305 
Antioch, principality of, 306, 307, 
310 

Antwerp, 162, 172, 557 
Apelles, Greek painter, 17 
Apennines, 333 

Apprentices, 349 - 352 , 605-606 
Aquileia, 73; mark of, 233 
Aquitaine, duchy of, 139, 242, 246- 
247, 500, 506 


613 


614 


INDEX 


Arabia and Arabs, 82, 139, 179 - 180 , 
185, 193, 232-233, 274 
Arabic language, 189, 190 
Arabic numerals, 192 
Aragon, kingdom of, 199, 388, 569, 
570, 573 - 574 ; House of, 610 
Arcadius, Roman emperor, 35, 
66 

Arch of Titus, 74 

Archbishops, 278, 375-376; and see 
Canterbury, Cologne, Lichfield, 
Magdeburg, Mainz, Milan, 
Rheims, Toledo, and Treves 
Archimedes, 20 

Architecture, Greek, 18; Roman, 29; 
Byzantine, 447; early Christian, 
448-449; Romanesque, 449 - 450 ; 
Norman, 270, 448; Gothic, 445, 
451 - 455 ; Renascence, 599-601 
Arctic Ocean, 11 

Arians and Arianism, 46-47, 82, 
119-120 
Aristarchus, 20 

Aristotle, 366, 380, 391, 406, 409, 
415, 416, 417, 443, 591 
Arithmetic, 404, 409; and see 
Mathematics 
Arius, 46 
Arles, 438 

Armagnac, Bernard, count of, 520- 
521 

Armagnacs, French faction, 520-521 
Armenia Minor, 304 
Arms and armor, 52-53, 191, 200 - 
201 

Army, see War 
Arnold of Brescia, 356 
Arras, 340 

Art, definition of, 445; Greek, 17; 
Byzantine, 104 - 105 ; mediaeval, 
chap. 26 ; Renascence, 598-604 
Art of War , by Machiavelli, 608 
Artevelde, Jacob van, 501, 503 
Arthur, King, 432 
Arthur, nephew of King John of 
England, 490 

Arthurian Romances, 177-178, 434- 
437 

Artillery, 526 

Artois, county of, 461 

Asia Minor, 297, 303, 575, 576 


Asser, biographer of Alfred the 
Great, 261 
Assisi, 399 

Assizes of Jerusalem, 307 
Astrology, 421 

Astronomy, 20, 192, 404, 420-421 
Asturias, kingdom of the, 570 
Athanarich, king of the West 
Goths, 64 
Athanasius, 109 

Athaulf, king of the West Goths, 69 

Athelstan, king of England, 261 

Attalia, 311 

Attigny, 129 

Attila, 72, 73, 431 

Augustine, see St. Augustine 

Aurignac man, 9 

Ausculta fili, 376 

Austin Canons, 399 

Austrasia, 127, 128, 138, 242 

Austria, 228, 549 

Auvergne, county of, 246 

Avars, 99, 148 

Averroes, 416 

Avignon, 464, 517, 531-532, 534, 
536, 537 

Ayesha, wife of Mohammed, 187 
Azores Islands, 584, 595 

Babylonian Captivity, see Papacy 
Bacon, Roger, 409, 422-424 
Bacon, Sir Francis, 409 
Baghdad, 188, 296, 419 
Bailli, 466, 468 
Baldwin, count of Edessa, 308 
Baldwin, count of Flanders, 304 
Balearic Islands, 574 
Balkan Mountains, 4 
Balkan Peninsula, 6, 99, 566 
Baltic Sea, 5, 175, 341, 359, 555-556 
Banalite, 221 

Bankers and banking, 334, 606 
Baptism, see Sacraments 
Barbarians, in the Roman Empire, 
33-34; outside the Roman Em¬ 
pire, 49; invasions of, 78-79, 
chap. 6 

Barcelona, 322, 343, 570-571 
Bardi, Florentine bankers, 606 
Bari, 327 

Barons, see Nobility 


INDEX 


615 


Basel, 341, 554, 606; Council of, 
544-545, 551 

Basil the Great, see St. Basil 
Basques, 11, 246, 433 
Bathing, 422 

Bavaria and Bavarians, 62, 139, 
168, 226, 355 

Bayezid, Turkish emir, 577 
Bayonne, 509 
Bede, 265 

Becket, Thomas 4, see St. Thomas 
a Becket 

Bedford, John, duke of, 523, 525 
Bedouins, see Arabia and Arabs 
Beirut, 36 
Belgse, 252 
Belgium, 242 

Belisarius, Byzantine general, 97 
Benedict, St., see St. Benedict 
Benedict XI, Pope, 378 
Benedictine monasteries, 397 
Benefice, 136, 200 
Benevento, duchy of, 99, 233, 274 
Beowulf, 264-265, 431 
Berenger of Tours, 390, 405 
Bergen, 555 
Berlin, 228 
Berry, county of, 246 
Bible, 43, 45 , 63-64, 158, 382, 384, 
392, 517, 539, 545 
Billings, mark of the, 228 
Bishop, 44, 278, 375-376 
Black Death, 401, 511 , 513, 604-605 
Black Prince, 506, 508, 512 
Black Sea, 4, 5, 6, 94, 173, 330, 581 
Blois, county of, 245 
Boccaccio, 535, 590-591 
Boethius, 84-85, 88, 89 - 90 , 158, 443 
Bohemia and Bohemians, 227, 228, 
241, 539-540, 544-545, 549, 550, 
551, 558 - 560 , 561 

Bohemund, Norman leader of First 
Crusade, 299, 301, 302, 304, 305, 
306 

Boleslav, king of Poland, 239 
Bologna, 331; university of, 104, 
354, 409-411 

Boniface VIII, Pope, 373, 376, 471, 
472, 531 
Bonn, 71, 165 
Bordeaux, 139, 509 


Borgia, Cesare, 610 
Bosporus, 35, 303 
Botticelli, 604 
Boulogne, 511 

Bouvines, battle of, 364, 463, 491 
Bracciolini, Poggio, Renascence 
scholar, 590 
Bramante, 600-601 
Brandenburg, mark of, 228, 231, 
371, 550 
Bremen, 555 

“Brethren of the Common Lot”, 
536 

Bretigny, Peace of, 506 - 507 , 519, 
536 

Bridges, see Roads and Bridges 
Brigands, 508 
Brindisi, 301 
Bristol, 597-598 

Britain, Early Stone Age in, 251; 

Roman, 71, 85-86 
British Isles, 250 

Britons, early inhabitants of Brit¬ 
ain, 251 

Brittany, 71, 242, 246 , 465 
Bruce, Robert, king of Scotland, 
177, 498 

Bruges, 175, 339, 340, 514, 515, 555 
Brunelleschi, 600 

Brunhilda, queen of the Franks, 127 
Brunswick, 359, 555-556 
Buddha, 113 

Bulgaria, 300, 311, 566, 576 
Burgundians, 62, 70; kingdom of 
the, 6, 124, 431 

Burgundy, Lower, 240-241; Upper, 
242 

Burgundy, Mary of, 551 
By-laws, 52, 262 

Byzantine civilization, 100-107; and 
see Eastern Empire 
Byzantine Empire, see Eastern Em¬ 
pire 

Cabot, John, 598 

Cadiz, 572 

Caedmon, 265, 431 

Caesar, Julius, 24, 25, 28, 50, 252 

Caesarius of Heisterbach, 427-428 

Calais, 505-506, 521, 525 

Caliph, 187 


616 


INDEX 


Calvin, 112 
Cambrai, 339, 340 
Cambridge, university of, 413, 415, 
516 

Camoldoli, monastic order of, 279 
Canary Islands, 584, 595 
Canon law, 375, 386-387, 405, 411 
Canossa, 287-288 

Canterbury, 255; archbishop of, 
263, 267, 375; cathedral of, 488 
Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chau¬ 
cer, 437-438, 517, 535 
Cape of Good Hope, 596, 597 
Cape Verde Islands, 584 
Capetian dynasty, 243, 247, 313, 
458, 459, 531 

Capitalism, rise of, 605-607 
Capua, 235 
Carcassonne, 208-209 
Cardinals, 282, 356, 373-374, 531, 
534, 537, 543 

Caroline minuscule, 158-159 
Carolingian dynasty, 127-128, 149- 
150, 168, 169, 243, 278, 326; and 
chaps. 10, 11, and 12, passim. 
“Carolingian Renascence”, 157-159 
Carolingian Romances, 180, 432- 
434 

Carpathian Mountains, 4 
Carthage, 24, 70, 74 
Carthusians, 398, 538 
Caspian Sea, 4, 5, 6 
Cassiodorus, 88, 90-91, 118, 158 
Castile, 295, 569, 570, 583 
Castilian language, 440 
Castle, 206-209, 260 
Castle guard, 204 
Cathari, see Albigensians 
Cathedral chapter, 376, 398-399 
Cathedrals, 279, chap. 26; ground 
plans, 449, 452; of England, 452- 
453; of France, 452; of Germany, 
448; of Spain, 453 

Cavalcanti, Guido, Tuscan poet, 441 
Celibacy of the clergy, 270, 280, 

282-283 

Celtic church, see Church 
Celts, 246, 251 
Cevennes Mountains, 4, 340 
Chalons, battle of, 73 
Chambre des comptes, 468 


Champagne, county of, 242, 465; 

Fair Towns of, 341 
Chancellor, English, 477, 482 
Chancery, papal, 374 
Chanson d’Antioch, 322-323 
Chanson de Roland, 433-434 
Chansons de geste, 433-434 
Charlemagne, 6, 136-137, 139, 141, 
143-159, 196, 197, 207, 227, 265, 
294, 404-405, 432, 433-434, 447, 
570; tomb of, 237-238 
Charles the Great, see Charlemagne 
Charles the Bald, king of the West 
Franks and emperor, 161,165, 207 
Charles the Fat, king of the East 
Franks and emperor, 167 
Charles the Simple, king of the West 
Franks, 174 

Charles IV, emperor, Holy Roman 
Empire, 549, 550, 553, 559-560 
Charles V, emperor, Holy Roman 
Empire, 552 

Charles IV, king of France, 502, 503 
Charles V, 507-508, 533 
Charles VI, 520, 522, 529 
Charles VII, 523, 525, 526, 607 
Charles VIII, 610-611 
Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, 
554 

Chartres, 405; cathedral of, 455 
Chateau Gaillard, 461, 462 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 272, 517, 535 
Childeric, king of the Franks, 70 
China, 565 

Chioggia, battle of, 582 
Chivalry, 205-206 
Chosroes I, king of Persia, 419 
Chretien de Troyes, Romance poet, 
436 

Christianity, early history of, 37-39; 
and Roman Empire, 39-42; Greek 
elements, 43; Jewish elements, 
42-43; and see Art, Church, 
Learning, Literature, Monasti- 
cism, etc. 

Chrysoloras, Manuel, professor of 
Greek, 591 

Church, 205-206, 385-389, 586, 
chaps. 23 and 31; early organisa¬ 
tion, 43-44; and civilization, 
108-109, 147; and feudalism, 


INDEX 


617 


277-279; popular criticism of, 
535, 546; Celtic, 251, 256; Greek, 
316; Nestorian, 47; Paulician, 
393; Russian, 565 

Church and State, chap. 19, 362, 
388; Dante’s views, 442; in the 
Frankish Empire, 152-156; in the 
Holy Roman Empire, 231-232, 
237, 240, 241, 285-286; in France, 
248, 471-472; in England, 270, 
476, 485-488 

Church courts, 385-387, 485-488; 

and see Inquisition 
Church Councils, 48, 375; and see 
Councils 

Cicero, 28, 443, 589, 590 
Cimbri, 59 

Cistercians, 378, 396-397 
Citeaux, 396 
Cities, see Towns 
City of God , 111, 112-113 
Civilization, 2, 77; Aegean, 12-13; 
Greek, 15—18; Hellenistic, 20-21, 
22; of Carthage, 568; of the Ger¬ 
man kingdoms, chap. 7; of the 
Northmen, 176-178; of the Sara¬ 
cens, 189-193, 568; of the south of 
France, 438, 464; of the kingdom 
of Naples and Sicily, 364-368; 
effect of war upon, 526, 529, 605 
Civitas, 44 

Civitate, battle of, 276 
Clairvaux, 398 

Classical Romances, 437-438 
Claudius, 252 
Clement V, Pope, 531, 532 
Clement IX, Pope, 423 
Clement III, antipope, 288, 362 
Clement VII, antipope, 537, 538 
Clergy, chap. 23, 204, 270, 391-392, 
527 

Clericis Laicos , 471 
Clermont, 293, 297 
Clovis, 124-126 

Cluniac Reformation, 261, 277, 231- 
291, 293, 294, 297 

Cluny, monastic order of, 279, 281, 
377, 396-397, 448 
Cnossus, 13 

Cnut, king of Scandinavia and 
England, 239, 267, 269 


Cceur, Jacques, 606, 607 
Coimbra, county of, 571 
Coinage, of Charlemagne, 325; 

Florentine, 325 
Colleges, 414-415 

Cologne, 165, 341, 554, 555, 556; 

archbishop of, 231, 278, 285, 550 
Coloni, 32, 53, 60,134,136,196, 210, 
252 

Columbus, Christopher, 421, 595,597 
Comitatus, 54 

Commerce, chap. 21; Roman, 85, 
252, 324; in the age of Charle¬ 
magne, 324; of the Northmen, 
175-176, 555; Saracen, 190-191; 
influence of the Crusades upon, 
321-322; German, 554-555; be¬ 
ginnings of modern, 604-606; and 
see Shipping, Towns, Trade 
Routes, etc. 

Common Law, 30, 484 
Communes, Flemish, 342, 513; 

German, 342, 554; Italian, 334- 
338, 353, 356-358, 410; northern, 
341-342 

Compiegne, 129 

Compostella, pilgrim shrine of St. 

James at, 432 
Compurgators, 55 
Conciliar movement, 540-546 
Concordat of Worms, 290-291 
Confession, 379 

Confessions, of St. Augustine, 111, 

113 

Confirmation, 379; and see Sacra¬ 
ments 

Conrad I, king of the East Franks, 
168, 226 

Conrad II, emperor, Holy Roman 
Empire, 239 
Conrad III, 291, 311 
Conrad IV, 370, 547 
Conradin, 370 

Consolations of Philosophy, 89-90 
Constance, Council of, 542-544, 
551, 590 

Constance, Peace of, 358 
Constantine, Roman emperor, 35, 
40, 41, 42, 43, 93 

Constantine VI, eastern emperor, 
154 


618 


INDEX 


Constantine XI, eastern emperor, 
578 

Constantinople, 35, 92, 93-95, 173, 
184, 295, 316-317, 319, 330, 333, 
578, 590; Council of, 47, 95 
Copenhagen, 556 
Corbogha, emir of Mosul, 305 
Cordova, 99, 188, 419; caliphate of, 
569 

Corinth, 24 
Cornwall, 251 
Correggio, 604 
Corte Nuova, 369 
Cortes, 343 
Corvee, 221 

Corvinus, Matthias, king of Hun¬ 
gary, 562 

Councils of the Church, see Basel, 
Constance, Constantinople, Lat- 
eran, Nicaea, Pavia, and Pisa 
Count and County, 130, 131, 136, 
150, 151-152, 153 
Counts of the Palace, 231 
Crecy, campaign and battle of, 505 
Cremona, 331 
Cretan language, 13 
Crete, 12, 13 
Crossbow, 204 

Crusaders, 331, 385, 432; motives 
of, 298-299; numbers of, 304 
Crusades, chap. 20, 189, 327, 333, 
337, 338, 340, 391, 419, 420, 427, 
534, 572, 575; in the western 
Mediterranean, 295; in Spain, 
295; First, 177, 290, 293, 296, 
297-307, 321; Second, 291, 310- 
311, 319, 459, 572; Third, 312- 
314, 360, 461, 489; Fourth, 314- 
317, 319, 575, 581; of Frederick II, 
368; of Edward I, 496; results of, 
317-323 
Cueta, 583-584 

Curia, papal, 374, 375, 376, 385, 534 

Curiales, 32, 33 

Cynewulf, 265, 431 

Cyprian, 44 

Cyprus, 313 

Czech language, 559; and see Bo¬ 
hemia 

Czecho-Slovakia, 560 
Czechs, 560; and see Bohemia 


D’Ailly, Peter, 541 
Daleminzes, 227 
Dalmatia, 315 

Damascus, 187-188, 303, 305, 311 
Danegeld, 173, 287 
Danelaw, 174, 177, 261 
Danes, 207, 259-260, 265, 267; and 
see Denmark 
Danube river, 5 
Dante, 430, 441-444, 532 
Danzig, 175, 556 
Dea Syra, worship of, 36 
Decameron, 535 

Decius, Roman emperor, 40, 63, 114 
Defensor Pads, 532-533 
De la Pole, William, 606 
De Monarchia, by Dante, 442, 532 
Denmark, 7, 150, 170, 173, 556 
Dialectic, 404 
Diaz, Bartolomeo, 596 
Diet, or Reichstag (German), 343, 
548 

Diocese, episcopal, 375-376 
Diocletian, Roman emperor, 34- 
35, 40 

Discoveries, Age of the, 593-598 

Divine Comedy, 442-444 

Dnieper river, 175, 564 

Dogger Bank, 502 

Dominic, St., see St. Dominic 

Dominicans, 378, 394, 395, 401-402 

Domremy, 524 

Donatello, 600, 601-602 

Donation of Constantine, 142, 593 

Dorvlaeum, battle of, 303 

Douai, 340 

Dublin, 174, 497 

Duellum, 205 

Du Guesclin, Bertrand, 508-509, 
523-524 

Dunstan, archbishop of Canter¬ 
bury, see St. Dunstan 
Durazzo, 301 

Ealdorman, in Anglo-Saxon Eng¬ 
land, 262-263, 266 
Early Man, in Europe, 7-8; in 
Italy, 22 

East Anglia, 254, 266 
East Franks, kingdom of the, 168, 
226 


INDEX 


619 


East Goths, 63, 75-76, 82-85 
Eastern Empire, chap. 8, 186, 233, 
274, 296, 302, 318, 319, 324, 333, 
566, 575-576; institutions of gov¬ 
ernment, 95-96,186 
Ebro river, 5, 6, 570, 571 
Ecclesiastical History of England , 
265, 427 

Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, see 
Church courts 

Edessa, county of, 306, 307, 310 
Edinburgh, 258 

Education, see Learning, Schools, 
Universities, etc. 

Edward the Elder, Anglo-Saxon 
king of England, 261 
Edward the Confessor, 267, 269, 271 
Edward I, king of England, 317, 
471, 495-498, 500 
Edward II, 474, 499 
Edward III, 498-499, 501, 502, 
503, 505, 506, 512, 527 
Edward IV, 529, 607 
Edwin, king of Northumbria, 258 
Egbert, king of Wessex, 258 
Egypt, 24, 94, 114, 184, 315 
Eider river, 227 
Einhard, 143, 144, 153 
Elbe river, 227, 559 
Eleanor, duchess of Aquitaine, 459- 
460, 479 

Ely, abbey of, 118 
Emma of Normandy, 267 
Empires, see Angevin, Eastern, 
Frankish, Holy Roman, Roman 
England, 202, 247, 345, 397, 538, 
539, 556, 611; and see chaps. 18, 
28, 29, and 30 

English Channel, 4, 501-502 
English language, 516 
English literature, see Literature 
Enqueteurs, 466, 468 
Estates General, French, 343, 472- 
473, 496-497, 515, 526, 527 
Ethandune, battle of, 259 
Ethelred the Unready, Anglo-Saxon 
king of England, 266-267 
Etruria, 22-23 
Etruscans, 22-23 

Etymologies, of Isidore of Seville, 

91 


Eucharist, 380; and see Mass 
Eudo, duke of Aquitaine, 139 
Eugenius IV, Pope, 551 
Euric, king of the West Goths, 69, 
82 

Euripides, 17 

Europe, physical geography of, 

chap. 1 

Excommunication, 388-389 
Extreme Unction, 380-381 

Fatimites, Mohammedan dynasty, 
188, 305, 312 
Faustrecht, 196 

Ferdinand, king of Aragon, 574 
Fertile Crescent, 179, 181 
Feudalism, beginnings, 133-137; 
later development, 167-168, chap. 
15; in Anglo-Saxon England, 264, 
266; in Norman England, 270; in 
France, 243-244; in Germany, 
229-231, 370-371, 547-548; in 
the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 
307-308; in the Kingdom of 
Naples and Sicily, 365-366; in the 
Chanson de Roland, 434; in the 
Church, 277-279 
Fief, 199-200; and see Feudalism 
Finland, Gulf of, 173, 175 
Finns, 11 

Fisheries, 501-502, 556 
Flanders, county of, 165, 244, 339- 
340, 341, 465, 501 
Flemings, 244 
Flemish language, 70 
Florence, city of, politics, industry 
and commerce, 331, 334, 441; 
during the Renascence, 588, 598, 
599, 600, 602, 605, 606; Republic 
of, 608, 610 

Forfeiture, 203; and see Feudalism 
France, 230, 531, 538, 545; physical 
geography, 3, 6; northern, 520- 
521, 524; southern, 340, 394, 
520-521; conquest of the south 
by the north, 464-465; and see 
chaps. 17, 27, 29, and 30 
Francis of Assisi, see St. Francis 
Franciscans, 378, 395, 400-401, 538; 
Franciscan Observants, 401; 
Spiritual Franciscans, 401, 535 


620 


INDEX 


Franconia, duchy of, 124, 168, 226, 
227, 230 

Frankish empire, 154-156; and 
see chaps. 12 and 13 
Franks, early history of, 62, 69, 123- 
127; conversion to Christianity, 
124-126; Ripuarian, 70-71, 124; 
Salian 56-57, 70, 124; and see 
chaps. 10 and 11 

Frederick I (Barbarossa), 313, 337, 
345, 354-358 

Frederick II, 317, 363, 364-370, 371 
441, 552, 554, 557 
Frederick III, 551 
Free Companies, 508, 536-537 
Freedom from arrest, 528 
Freedom of debate, 528 
Freemen, among early Germans, 
52-53; among the Franks, 131— 
132, 133-134, 150; in the medi¬ 
aeval manor, 216-217, 219-221 
Freiburg, 606 

French language, 516-517; and see 
Langue d’oeil and Langue d’oc 
French literature, see Literature 
Friars, 395, 396, 399-402 
“Friends of God”, 536 
Frisia, 164 
Frisians, 253 

Furlong, English unit of linear meas¬ 
ure, 215 

Furor teutonicus, 57 

Fyrd, Anglo-Saxon army, 263, 264 

Gaels, 251 

Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, 80 
Gaius, Roman legist, 103 
Galen, physician, 421 
Galerius, 40 
Galla Placidia, 69 
Gama, Vasco da, 421, 597 
Gascony, duchy of, 246, 495, 525 
Gattamelata, equestrian statue of, 
602 

Gaul, Roman prefecture, 24, 251; 
population of, 79 

Gelimer, king of the Vandals, 97 
Genghiz Khan, 564-565, 594 
Genoa, 295, 306, 309, 315, 317, 321, 
322, 327, 330, 333-334, 337- 
338, 343, 361, 572, 581-582 


Genoa, Gulf of, 333 
Geoffrey, count of Anjou, 478, 479 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 435 
Geographica, of Ptolemy, 595 
Geography, 404, 593; and see Dis¬ 
coveries 

Geologic eras, 3-4 
Geometry, 404, 409; and see Mathe¬ 
matics 

Gerard of Cremona, 420 
Gerbert of Aurillac, see Sylvester II 
German literature, see Literature 
Germania, of Tacitus, 50 
Germanic languages, 79, 430 
Germanic law, 49, 51-52, 64-66, 
79 

Germans, sources of information, 
civilization, institutions, etc., 
chap. 5; conversation to Chris¬ 
tianity, 58; invasions, chap. 6 
Germany, physical geography, 3, 6; 
early history, 168; eastward ex¬ 
pansion, 227-229, 358-359, 557- 
658; and see chaps. 16 and 32; 
see also Holy Roman Empire 
Gerson, John, theologian, 541 
Gesta Dei per Francos , by Gerbert 
de Nogent, 427 
Ghent, 339, 340, 515 
Ghibbelines, 291, 355 
Ghiberti, 601 

Gibraltar, Straits of, 139, 185 
Gildas, 71 

Gilds, 374, 605; craft gilds, 349- 
352; merchant gilds, 348-349 
Giotto, 603 
Glass, 192 

Glastonbury, abbey of, 118, 261 
Gnosticism, 46, 114 
Godfrey de Bouillon, duke of Lower 
Lorraine, 301, 302, 306, 308 
Godwin, earl of Wessex, 268 
Golden Bull, 546, 549-550 
Gothic architecture, see Architec¬ 
ture 

Goths, early history, 62; conversion 
to Christianity, 63-64; and see 
East Goths and West Goths 
Gottfried von Strasburg, German 
poet, 371, 439 
Grammar, 158, 404 


INDEX 


621 


Granada, Moorish principality, 419, 
572-573, 574 
Gratian, 42, 387, 411, 415 
Great Charter, English, 490-492 
Great Schism, 537-544 
Greece, physical geography, 13—14; 
early history, 14; colonial expan¬ 
sion, 14; political failure, 18 
Greek language, 16-17, 19, 20, 
87, 590-591 

Greek literature, see Literature 
Greek philosophy, 15-16 
Greenland, 173 

Gregorian music, 122, 381-382 
Gregory the Great, Pope, 121-122, 
265, 294, 456 
Gregory VI, 287 

Gregory VII, 177, 270, 276, 282-289, 
297, 320, 377, 405 
Gregory IX, 367, 369, 395, 494 
Gregory XI, 537 
Gregory Nazianzus, 109 
Gregory of Tours, 125, 426-427 
Grosseteste, Robert, bishop of Lin¬ 
coln, 423 

Guelf, 291, 355, 362 
Guienne, county of, 460, 465 
Guinea, coastal region of Africa, 
584-585 

Guinicelli, Guido, Tuscan poet, 441 
Gutenberg, John, inventor of print¬ 
ing, 592 

Guthrum, king of the Danes, 174, 
259 

Hadrian I, Pope, 153 
Hadrian IV, 355, 377 
Hafrsfjord, battle of, 174 
Hamburg, 175, 341 
Hanse, 348; Flemish, 339 
Hanseatic League, 341, 555-557, 
605 

Hapsburgs, House of, 548-549, 551, 
552, 560, 562 

Harold Blue Tooth, king of Den¬ 
mark, 227 

Harold Fairhair, king of Scandi¬ 
navia, 174 

Harold Hardrada, king of Norway, 
269 

Harold, king of England, 268-269 


Haroun-al-Rashid, 188 
Hastings, battle of, 268, 269 
Health, of city dwellers, 347-348 
Hegira, 181 

Heidelberg, university of, 413 
Helena, mother of Constantine, 293 
Hellenistic age, 20 
Hellenistic civilization, 20-21, 22 
Heloise, 407-408 

Henry I, the Fowler, king of Ger¬ 
many, 168, 227, 228, 230 
Henry II, emperor, Holy Roman 
Empire, 238-239 

Henry III, 239, 240-241, 272, 276, 
285 

Henry IV, 285-290, 300 
Henry V, 290-291, 478 
Henry VI, 360, 361-362 
Henry I, king of England, 474-478 
Henry II, 355, 460, 461, 474, 479- 
489, 490 

Henry III, 474, 492-496 
Henry IV, 519-520, 528, 583 
Henry V, 520-523, 528 
Henry VI, 528-529 
Henry VII, 530, 549, 553 
Henry I, king of France, 247 
Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, 
355, 357, 358-360, 361, 481, 555 
Henry, prince of Portugal, 584-585, 
595, 596 
Heraldry, 206 

Heresy, 389-396, 638-540, 542; and 
see Albigensians, Hussites, Wal- 
densians, Wyclif, etc. 

Hermanric, king of the East Goths, 
64 

Hermits, 114 
Herodotus, 17 

Hildebrand, see Gregory VII 
Hildebrandeslied, 56 
Himalaya Mountains, 4 
Hipparchus, 20 

History, definition of, 1; values of 
the study of, 1-3; pre-literary, 7; 
Greek writers of, 17; writing of, 
stimulated by the Crusades, 322; 
mediaeval writers of, 265, 426-427, 
435 

History of the Franks, by Gregory of 
Tours, 427 


622 


INDEX 


History of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 
by William, archbishop of Tyre, 
427 

History of the Kings of Britain, by 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 435 
History of the Lombards, by Paul the 
Deacon, 427 

History of the World, by Orosius, 
265 

Hohenstaufens, 355, 362, 370, 494, 
547, 610; and see chap. 22 
Holy Eucharist, 379; and see Sac¬ 
raments 

Holy Lance, 305, 306 
Holy Roman Empire, 235-236, 545- 
546; and see chaps. 16, 22, and 32 
Holy Sepulchre, Church of the, 294, 
307, 368 

Homage, oath of, 198-199; and see 
Feudalism 
Homer, 158 
Honey, 223 

Honorius, Roman emperor, 35, 66, 
67 

Honorius III, Pope, 368 
Horace, 28, 158, 443 
Hospitals, 422 

House of Commons, 516, 527, 528 
House of Lords, 527, 528 
Hugh Capet, king of France, 169, 
242, 244, 245, 247-248 
Hugh, count of Vermandois, 310 
Humanism, 589-593, 611 
Hundred, territorial unit in Anglo- 
Saxon England, 262, 264, 271 
Hundred-man, 130, 131, 262 
Hundred-moot, 262, 264 
Hundred Years’ War, 498, 532, 544; 

and chaps. 29 and 30 
Hungary and the Hungarians, 166, 
227, 228, 239, 241, 289, 294, 300 
311, 561-562, 564, 577-578 
Huns, 64, 72-73, 228, 232, 332 
Hunyadi, John, Hungarian hero, 
562, 577 

Huss, John 539-540, 543, 560 
Hussites, and the Hussite Wars, 393, 
644-545, 551, 559-560 

Iberian Peninsula, 4, 6 
Iceland, 173, 177 


Iconium, 303 

Iconoclasm and the Iconoclastic 
controversy, 106-107, 140 
Ictinus, 18 

II Convito, by Dante, 442 
Immaculate Conception, doctrine 
of the, 384 

Immunity, 136, 196-197; and see 
Feudalism 

Impeachment, by the English Par¬ 
liament, 527 
India, 184, 585, 597 
Indo-European languages, 10-11 
Indulgences, 379-380; and see Sac¬ 
raments 

Industry, in Roman Britain, 252; 
in Florence, 334, 340; in Flanders, 
339-340, 501; in southern France, 
340; mediaeval and modern com¬ 
pared, 350-351; beginnings of cap¬ 
italism in, 605-606 
Innocent II, Pope, 291 
Innocent III, chap. 23; 314, 363, 
364, 368, 373, 379, 385, 387, 388, 
389, 391, 394, 464, 490, 492, 572 
Innocent IV, 369 
Interdict, 389 

Investiture, and the Investiture 
struggle, 199, 281, 283-284, 286- 
289 

Iona, monastery of, 265 
Ionian Sea, 581 
Inquisition, 395-396 
Ireland, 174, 250, 251, 265; physi¬ 
cal features of, 3; early civiliza¬ 
tion of, 255-256; England and, 
497-498 

Irene, Byzantine empress, 154, 155 
Irnerius, 410 

Isaac II, eastern emperor, 316 
Isabella, queen of Castile, 574 
Isidore of Seville, 88, 91, 158 
Isis, worship of, 36-37 
Isle-de-France, 245-246, 459 
Italian language, 430 
Italian literature, see Literature 
Italy, 226, 232-233, 533, 588-589; 
physical geography of, 6, 22; early 
man in, 22; population, fifth 
century a.d., 79; northern, 330- 
338, 587; southern 330; and see 


INDEX 


623 


under principal political divi¬ 
sions, such as Venice, Milan, 
Genoa, Florence, States of the 
Church, Kingdom of Naples and 
Sicily, etc.; see also Holy Roman 
Empire 

Itinerant Justices, English, 478, 482- 
484 

Ivan the Great, Czar of Russia, 566 

Jacquerie, the, 513 
Jagellon, House of, 561 
James I, king of Aragon, 573-574 
Janissaries, 581 
Jerome, St., see St. Jerome 
Jerome of Prague, 540, 543 
Jerusalem, 293, 294, 297, 306, 312, 
585 

Jerusalem, Latin kingdom of, 307- 
310, 313, 317, 318, 333-334, 368, 
481 

Jews, in France, 470; in Spain, 186- 
187; as money-lenders, 605 
Joan of Arc, 516, 524-525 
Joanna of Castile, 552 
John XII, Pope, 234, 235 
John XXII, 378, 535 
John, king of England, 199, 308, 460, 
462, 467, 489-492 

John, king of France, 506, 507, 515 
John I, king of Portugal, 583 
John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, 
519, 583 
Joinville, 322 
Jongleurs, 432 
Jordanes, 73 

Judith, Frankish empress, 161-162 
Julian the Goth, Roman emperor, 70 
Julius I, Pope, 600 
Jura Mountains, 4 
Jury, English, 482-484, 529 
Justiciar, English, 477, 482 
Justinian, eastern emperor, 81, 92, 
95, 96, 98, 99, 104, 115, 184-185, 
418 

Justinian Code, 102-104, 354, 409, 
426 

Jutes, 253 

Kadijah, wife of Mohammed, 181 
Kalmar, Union of, 556 


Karl Martel, 128, 138-139, 141, 185 
Karl the Great, see Charlemagne 
Kent, 255 

Kent, kingdom of, 254, 255 
Kiev, 175, 564; principality of, 664- 
565 

King Henry the Fifth, by William 
Shakespeare, 522 

Knight and Knighthood, 200-201, 
203, 206 

Knights of St. John, or Hospitalers, 
309, 312, 320, 538 
Knights of the Sword, 371 
Kniwa, king of the West Goths, 63 
Koran, the, 182, 190 
Kossava, battle of, 577 
Kublai Khan, 565 

Laborers, Statute of, 511, 512 
Lancaster, House of, 519-520, 529 
Land, hunger for, as a motive for 
migration, 61; division of, among 
the German invaders, 80; among 
the West Goths, 82 
Lanfranc, archbishop of Canter¬ 
bury, 270, 475 
Langland, William, 272 
Languages, decreasing in number, 
11 

Langeudoc, see France 
Langue Joe , 245; and see Romance 
languages 

Langue Jail, 244, 430, 432; and see 
Romance languages 
Las Navas da Tolosa, battle of, 572 
“Last Supper”, fresco by Leonardo 
da Vinci, 604 
Lateran Councils, 375 
Latin language, 28-29, 70, 71, 252 
Latin literature, see Literature 
Latin Quarter, in Paris, 412 
Lausitz, German mark, 228 
La Vita Nuova, by Dante, 442 
Learning, Greek, 15-16; Roman, 
28; early mediaeval, 87-88, 404- 
405; in Anglo-Saxon England, 
260-261, 265-266; mediaeval, 

chap. 24; Persian, 419; Saracenic, 
192-193 ; revival of classical, 
689-690 ; see also Civilization, 
Schools, Universities, etc. 


624 


INDEX 


Leather, Cordovan and Moroccan, 
191 

Lechfeld, battle of, 228 
Legnano, battle of, 358 
Lent, 219 

Leo the Great, Pope, 73, 119 
Leo III, 153, 156 
Leo IV, 166, 276 
Leo VIII, 235 
Leo XIII, 374 

Leo IV, eastern emperor, 154 
Leon, city of, 570 
Leon, kingdom of, 388, 569, 570 
Leonard of Pisa, astronomer, 366 
Leonine City, 166 
Le Pelerinage de Charlemagne, 323 
Liberal arts, 403-404, 409, 412, 415 
Liberal Arts, faculty of, 413 
Lichfield, archbishop of, 258 
Liege, 165, 339, 340, 405 
Lingua Toscana, 430, 441, 442; and 
see Italian language 
Lippi, Fra Filippo, painter, 603-604 
Lisbon, 572 

Literature, chap. 25; Greek, 16-17; 
Latin, 28; early Germanic, 49, 
56-57, 430-431 ; Anglo-Saxon, 

264-266, 271-272, 431; Norse, 
177; Norman French, 271-272; 
mediaeval French, 431-438, 439; 
mediaeval German, 371, 439-440; 
mediaeval English, 516-517; Ital¬ 
ian, 440-444 

Lithuania and the Lithuanians, 555, 
557, 558, 561 
Liturgy, 381-382 

Liutprand, king of the Lombards, 
141 

Livonia, 371 
Livy, 28, 443, 590 
Loire river, 5, 242, 245 
Lombard League, 357-358, 368-369 
Lombardy and the Lombards, 99, 
141, 233, 273-274, 331-332, 341 
London, 175, 341, 348-349, 555, 
557 

Long bow, 503-505 
Lorraine, 164, 230, 232, 242 
Lothair I, Frankish emperor, 161, 
162, 167 

Lothair II, 164 


Lothair II, emperor, Holy Roman 
Empire, 286, 291 
Lothian, 254 

Louis the Pious, 152, 160-162, 167 
Louis the German, son of Louis the 
Pious and king of the East 
Franks, 161, 167 
Louis the Child, 168 
Louis V, king of the West Franks 
and Frankish emperor, 169, 244 
Louis VI, king of France, 459 
Louis VII, 310-311, 319, 459, 460 
Louis VIII, 464-465, 492 
Louis IX, 317, 465, 467,468, 469, 507 
Louis XI, 526-527, 611 
Love, mediaeval manuals on the art 
of, 437 

Love poetry, in the south of France, 
438; of the Moors, 438 
Low Countries, 397, 556-557; and 
see Flanders 

Low German, dialects of, 254 
Low Latin, 429-430, 440; and see 
Romance languages 
Lowland Plain of Europe, 4-5 
Liibeck, 175, 341, 359, 555, 556, 557 
Lusatians, 227 

Luxembourg, House of, 549, 550, 
551, 559 

MacDonald, Ramsay, cited, 2 
Macedon and the Macedonians, 19, 
24, 301, 577 

Machiavelli, 607-608, 610 
Madeira Islands, 584, 595 
Magdeburg, archbishop of, 231 
Magyars, 228, 558, 562; and see 
Hungary 

Major domus, 128, 138 
Maine, county of, 245, 462, 463, 479 
Mainz, 341, 359, 554, 592 
Mainz, archbishop of, 231, 278, 285, 
375, 550 

Malory, Sir Thomas, 436 
Manicheism, 112 

Manor, 209-223; and see Feudalism 
Manuzio, Aldo, Venetian publisher, 
592 

Manzikert, battle of, 296 
Maps and map-making, 594-595, 
596 


INDEX 


625 


Marcel, Etienne, 514-515 
March Field, assembly of Frankish 
nobles, 131 
Marcian, 72 
Marco Polo, 594 

Marie de France, Romance poetess, 
436 

Marks, of the Frankish state, 150; 

on Germany’s frontier, 228-229 
Marne river, 245 

Marriage, among early Germans, 
51; of the clergy, 278-279; feudal 
right of, 203; sacrament of, 381, 
386 

Marseilles, 175, 309, 322, 326, 340, 
343 

Marsilius of Padua, 532-533, 541 
Martin V, Pope, 543 
Mass, 378, 380, 382, 405 
Masaccio, Renascence painter, 603 
Mathematics, in the Hellenistic age, 
20; Saracen knowledge of, 409; 
mediaeval, 420-421, 529 
Matilda, countess of Tuscany, 288 
Matilda, daughter of Henry I of 
England, 478, 479 
Maxentius, 41 

Maximilian I, emperor, Holy Ro¬ 
man Empire, 551-552, 554 
Maximus, Roman emperor, 56, 74 
Mayor of the palace, see Major 
domus 

Measurements, mediaeval, 214-215 
Mecca, 181, 182, 190 
Medici, Cosimo de’, 591, 600, 606, 
610 

Medici, Florentine banking house, 
606 

Medici, Lorenzo de’, 610 
Medicine, mediaeval, 421-422; con¬ 
tributions of the Saracens, 192- 
193 421 

Medina, 181, 182, 187 
Mediterranean Sea, 4, 5, 6 
Meissen, mark of, 228 
Mercantilism, 606-607 
Merchants, 614-515; of Aragon, 
574; of England, 503, 530; in 
Moslem lands, 190-191 
Mercia, Anglo-Saxon kingdom of, 
254, 256, 258; earldom of, 266 


Merovech, legendary founder of the 
Merovingian dynasty, 70 
Merovingian dynasty, 70, 124-127, 
128, 325-326 
Merseburg, mark of, 228 
Mesopotamia, 310 
Metz, 341 
Meuse river, 242 

Michael VIII, eastern emperor, 297 
Michael the Scot, mathematician, 
366 

Michelangelo, 591, 602, 604 
Middle Saxons, Anglo-Saxon king¬ 
dom, 254 

Milan, city of, 35, 331, 337, 357, 
422, 598; archbishop of, 547; 
cathedral of, 453; duchy of, 553, 
582, 608-610 

Military Orders, 308-309; Spanish, 
572; and see Knights of St. John, 
Templars, and Teutonic Order 
Military service, among the Franks, 
132, 133, 150; of the clergy, 278; 
feudal, 200-202; in mediaeval 
France, 526 
Minnesingers, 371, 439 
Minoan art, 13 
Minstrels, 432, 438-439 
Mirandola, Pico della, 588, 591 
Missi Dominici, 151-152 
Missions, Christian, 119-120, 121 
Mithras, worship of, 36 
Modena, 331 
Mohacs, battle of, 562 
Mohammed, 181-184, 187, 190 
Mohammed I, Turkish ruler, 577 
Mohammed II, 578, 580, 581 
Mohammedan civilization, 189- 
193; and see Arabia 
Mohammedan dynasties, 187-189 
Mohammedan religion, 182-184; 
and chap. 14 

Monarchy, institution of, among 
the early Germans, 53-54; among 
the West Goths, 82; among the 
Lombards, 99; in the Frankish 
state, 128-130; in Anglo-Saxon 
England, 263, 266; in mediaeval 
France, 243-244, 247-248, 458; 
in mediaeval Germany, 229-230, 
291-292; in Tudor England, 530 


626 


INDEX 


Monasteries, see Benedictine, Cam- 
oldoli, Carthusians, Cistercians, 
Dominicans, Franciscans, Val- 
lombrosa, etc. 

Monasticism, origin, 113-115; con¬ 
trast between eastern and west¬ 
ern, 115-116 

Mongol Empire and the Mongols, 
401, 564-565, 566, 594 
Montauban, 340 
Monte Cassino, 116, 166 
Montpellier, 340 
Mt. Cenis, Alpine pass of, 287 
Mountain ranges, of Europe, 3; of 
Asia, 3; as barriers to communi¬ 
cation, 6 

Moralia, by Gregory the Great, 122 
Morgarten, battle of, 553 
Mosaics, 448 

Moscow, principality of, 565-566 

Moselle river, 242 

Mosul, 303, 305, 310 

Murad I, Turkish ruler, 577 

Murray, Gilbert, cited, 2 

Music, mediaeval, 404, 455-456; 

Gregorian, 455-457 
Mycenae, 13 

Nancy, battle of 554 
Nantes, 164-165; bishop of, 278 
Naples, 166; university of, 366 
Naples and Sicily, kingdom of, 277, 
360, 363, 538, 574, 610 
Narbonne, 340 

Narses, Byzantine general, 98 
Nationalism, 225, 247, 545-546, 
586-587, 611; definition of, 10; 
economic, 606-607 ; and language, 
10; and race, 10; in Bohemia, 
559-560; in England, 493-494; 
616-517 ; in France, 523-626 
Navarre, 569 
Navigation, see Shipping 
Nazareth, battle of, 312 
Near East, 175, 294 
Neo-Platonism, 37 
Nestorians, 47; and see Church 
Netherlands, 5, 554; and see Low 
Countries 

Neustria, 127, 128, 138, 242 
New Testament, see Bible 


Nibelungerilied , 56, 431 

Nicsea, 303, 311, 576; Council of, 42 

Nicephorus, eastern emperor, 154 

Nicholas V, Pope, 590, 593 

Nichomachus, 89 

Nile river, 185 

Nimes, 324, 438 

Nobles, 196, 199, 204, 512, 513, 
515; in the Frankish state, 130- 
131, 167-168; in England, 484- 
485, 490-491, 529-530; in 

France, 527; in Germany, 240, 
291, 547-548 
Nomadic life, 180 
Nominalism, 405-409 
Norbert of Xanten, 399 
Norman Conquest, of England, 219, 
268-272, 431; of southern Italy 
and Sicily, 274-277, 295 
Normandy, duchy of, 174, 177, 242, 
244-246, 461-462, 476, 479, 489, 
490, 505, 522 
North Africa, 184 

North Sea, 5, 6, 341, 501-502, 557 
Northmen, chap. 13, 162, 164- 

165, 170-171, 176, 227, 258-259, 
274, 556 

Northumbria, Anglo-Saxon king¬ 
dom, 254, 256-258; earldom of, 
266 

Norway, kingdom of, 289, 556 
Novgorod, 174, 562-564 
Nureddin, Moslem emir, 312 

Oases, 179 

Oath of Strassbourg, 163 
Oath-helpers, see Compurgators 
Octavian, Roman emperor, 26 
Oder river, 5 

Odo, bishop of Bayeux, 278, 301 

Odo, count of Paris, 165, 168 

Odoacer, 75, 76 

Oise river, 245 

Old Testament, see Bible 

Omar, successor of Mohammed, 187 

Ommiad dynasty, 187-188 

Oporto, county of, 571 

Orange, 438 

Ordeal, 55-56, 483-484 

Order of the Sword, 537 

Ordination, 381; and see Sacraments 


INDEX 


627 


Orestes, 74 

Orkhan, Ottoman ruler, 576 
Orleans, 245, 341, 405, 525 
Orontes river, 304 
Orosius, 265, 443 
Osman, Ottoman ruler, 576 
Othman, successor of Mohammed, 
187 

Otto I, the Great, emperor, Holy 
Roman Empire, 227-236, 247, 
273, 559 
Otto II, 236 
Otto III, 236-238 
Otto IV, 362, 363, 463 
Ottocar II, king of Bohemia, 549 
Ovid, 443 

Oxford, university of, 413, 415, 517, 
538, 540 

Padua, 331 

Paganism, survival of, 42 
Painting, mediaeval, 602; Renas¬ 
cence, 602-604; and see Art 
Palermo, 295, 322, 330, 364, 366, 
419 

Palestine, 294, 296, 302 
Pandulf Iron Head, duke of Spo- 
leto, 235, 273-274 
Papacy, chaps. 23 and 31; 353, 
362, 369-370, 547; early his¬ 
tory of, 119-122; beginnings of 
political powers, 120-122; and 
the Holy Roman Empire, 231- 
232, 279; and the Crusades, 320- 
321; during the Babylonian cap¬ 
tivity, 531-537; and England, 
494, 517; and France, 471-472 
Papal States, see States of the 
Church 

Papinian, Roman legist, 30, 103 
Paris, cathedral school of, 418 
Paris, city of, 165, 172, 245, 341, 
412, 511, 514, 515, 522 
Paris, university of, 409, 411-412, 
414, 416-417, 461, 540 
Parish, 377 

Parlement, French, 468, 469, 471 
Parliament, English, 343, 495, 496, 
497, 503, 511, 512, 516, 517, 519 
627-528, 533-534, 538 
Parthenon, 18 


Parzival, 371, 439 
Paschal II, Pope, 290 
Pastoral Care , see Regula Pastor- 
alis 

Patriarchates, of the early church, 
119 

Paul of Tarsus, 38 
Paul the Deacon, 158 
Pavia, 99, 333, 337, 355; Council 
of, 544 

“Peace of God”, 280 
Peasants’ Revolt, 511-612, 539 
Peking, archbishopric of, 401 
Peloponnesus, 13, 566, 581 
Penance, 379; and see Sacraments 
Pepin of Landers, major domus, 128 
Pepin, son of Karl Martel, king of 
the Franks, 138, 139-140 
Pepin V, king of Aquitaine, 161 
Perche, county of, 245 
Perigord, county of, 246 
“Perpetual Compact”, of the Swiss 
Cantons, 552 
Persia, 565 

Peruzzi, Florentine family of bank¬ 
ers, 606 

Peter of Castelnau, papal legate, 394 
Peter Lombard, 415-416 
Peter’s pence, 374-375 
Peter of Amiens, alias Peter the 
Hermit, 300 

Peter Bartholomew, discoverer of 
Holy Lance, 305, 306 
Peter of Pisa, scholar of the Caro- 
lingian “Renascence”, 157 
Petrarch, 589-590 
Petrine doctrine, 44, 119; and see 
Papacy 
Pheidias, 18 

Philip II, king of Macedon, 19 
Philip I, emperor, Holy Roman 
Empire, 552 

Philip I, king of France, 247, 289, 
300 

Philip II (Augustus), king of France, 
313, 363, 388, 412, 460-464, 489 
Philip III, 465 
Philip IV, 469-472, 500, 531 
Philip VI, 501, 502, 503 
Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, 
523, 525 


628 


INDEX 


Philosophy, see Learning 
Piacenza, 331 
Picardy, county of, 245 
Pier della Vigna, 367 
Piers Plowman, see Vision of Piers 
Plowman 

Pike, Swiss weapon, 553 
Pilgrims and pilgrimages, 177, 293- 
294, 296, 385, 428, 432, 534 
Pirates, Moslem, 165-166, 175; 
Saracen, 189 

Pisa, 173, 295, 306, 309, 315, 317, 
321, 327, 330, 337-338, 361, 572, 
598; Council of, 541-542 
Pisano, Giovanni, sculptor, 455 
Pisano, Niccolo, sculptor, 455 
Plato, 16, 589, 591 
Platonic Academies, 591 
Platonic Academy, closing of the, 96 
Plautus, 590 
Pliny the Elder, 29, 590 
Plotinus, 37 

Podebrad, George, king of Bo¬ 
hemia, 560 
Poema del Cid, 440 
Poitiers, battle of, 506 
Poitou, county of, 246, 460, 506 
Poland, kingdom of, 239, 241, 557, 
559, 560-561, 564, 605 
Politian, professor of the classics 
at Florence, 596 

Political science, beginnings of, 607 
Pomerania, 371 
Ponthieu, county of, 506 
Poor Men of Lyons, see Waldensians 
Population, of Europe, at fall of 
Rome, 86, 327; in 1300, 327, 604; 
of England, 10th century, 247; 
of England, in 1300, 327; of 
France, 10th century, 247; of 
France in 1300, 327 
Po river, 5, 251 

Portugal, 388, 571, 583-585, 595- 
598 

Praemunire, Statute of, 517, 534 
Prague, university of, 413, 539, 549, 
559 

Pre-Celts, in British Isles, 251 
Premonstratensians, order of canons 
regular, 399 

Priests, 277-278, 283, 377-378 


Prince , by Machiavelli, 608 
Principes, among early Germans, 
54, 55 

Printing, 592 
Priscian, grammar of, 158 
Private jurisdiction, 196 
Private war, 205 
Protagenes, Greek painter, 17 
Protestant Reformation, 546 
Provence, county of, 438, 464-465, 
532 

Provisions of Oxford, 495 
Pro visors, Statute of, 517, 534 
Prussia, 555, 558; East, 561; West, 
561 

Ptolemy, Claudius, geographer, 29, 
593 

Public health, 422 
Punic language, 80-81 
Purgatory, 379, 394, 443 
Pyrenees Mountains, 4, 226, 340,567 

Quadrivium , 89, 403 
Quintilian, 590 

Race, physical characteristics of, 8; 
classification of, 8-10; race and 
nationality, 10; Alpine, 8; Med¬ 
iterranean, 9; Mongoloid, 9; 
Nordic, 8, 10 

Ramadan, Mohammedan fast of, 
183 

Ramsey, abbey of, 218-219 
Ranulf Flambard, 474-475, 476 
Raphael, 73, 604 

Ravenna, 35, 62, 67, 98, 332; East 
Gothic capital, 83; exarchate of, 
98, 141, 233; school of law at, 104 
Raymond IV, count of Toulouse, 
301, 304, 306 
Raymond VI, 394 
Raymond of Pennaforte, 387 
Realism, 405-409 
Redarii, Slav folk, 227 
Regula Pastoralis, by Pope Gregory 
the Great, 122 

Relief, 203; and see Feudalism 
Religion, of Arabia, 180; of the early 
Germans, 57-58; Oriental, 34, 

36-37 

Religious instruction, 382-383 


INDEX 


629 


Renascence, chap. 34; and see Art, 
Discoveries, Learning, etc. 
Rheims, 125, 169, 325, 347, 405; 

archbishop of, 243, 278, 376 
Rhetoric, 404; and see Learning, 
Schools, Universities, etc. 

Rhine river, 5 

Rhine, County Palatine of, 550 
Rhine-Danube canal, 6 
Rhone river, 5 

Riccardi, Florentine family of bank¬ 
ers, 606 

Richard I, king of England, 313, 
314, 361, 363, 460, 461, 489 
Richard II, 512, 519, 527, 528, 540 
Richard III, 529-530 
Ricimer, 74 
Rienzi, Cola di, 536 
Rivers, as highways of communica¬ 
tion, 5-6 

Roads and bridges, Roman, 23; 
among the early Germans, 52; 
mediaeval, 324-325, 344-346 
Robert the Pious, king of France, 
247 

Robert, count of Flanders, 301 
Robert Guiscard, 275-277, 288 
Robert the Strong, count of Paris, 
168 

Robert, duke of Normandy, 301, 
305, 474, 476 

Roger II, king of Naples and Sicily, 
277, 364-365 

Rollo, founder of Normandy, 174, 
268 

Roman emperors, 29-30, 31-32, 34 
Roman Empire, founding of, 25-26; 
greatest extent, 24; institutions of 
government, 29-31; civilization, 
26-34; causes of decline, 31-35; 
“fall” of, 75-77 

Roman Law, 30, 35, 199, 354-355; 
influence on the West, 104; in¬ 
fluence in France, 468; influence 
in Spain, 574 

Romance languages, 28, 429-430 
Romanesque architecture, 446-451; 

and see Architecture 
Rome, city of, early history, 22-23; 
sacked by West Goths, 68; by 
Vandals, 74; under East Gothic 


rule, 83, 86-88; population in 
600 a.d., 87; as seat of the papacy, 
119-120; attacked by the Mos¬ 
lems, 166; sacked by the Nor¬ 
mans, 289; see also 34, 324, 531, 
532, 534, 536, 537 
Romulus Augustulus, 75 
Roncaglia, Diet of, 356 
Roncesvalles, pass of, in the Pyr¬ 
enees, 433 

Roscellinus of Compiegne, nominal¬ 
ist, 406 

Rouen, 165, 177, 341, 525 
Roumania, 62, 577 
Rudolph of Hapsburg, emperor, 
Holy Roman Empire, 548 
Rule of St. Basil, 115 
Rule of St. Benedict, 116-117 
Runnymede, 491, 492 
Rurik, House of, 173, 562-564 
Russia, 173, 175, 557, 562-566, 605 

Saale river, 227 
Sacraments, 378-381 
Saga of Walthari, 57 
Sagas, 177 
Sahara desert, 6, 185 
St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, 109- 
110 

St. Angelo, castle of, 288 
St. Anselm, archbishop of Canter¬ 
bury, 405-406, 475, 476 
St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, 109, 
111-113, 115, 399, 416 
St. Augustine, missionary to the 
Anglo-Saxons, 121, 255 
St. Basil, 115 

St. Benedict of Nursia, 116-117 
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 291, 310- 
311, 391, 398 

St. Brigitta, of Sweden, 536 
St. Catharine of Siena, 536 
St. Chrysostom, 109 
St. Columba, 256 
St. Columban, 117, 118 
St. Dominic, 394, 401-402 
St. Dunstan, archbishop of Canter¬ 
bury, 118, 261 

St. Francis, 399-401, 441, 603 
St. George, statute of by Donatello, 
602 


630 


INDEX 


St. Gotthard, Alpine pass, 552, 553 
St. Jerome, 109, 110-111, 115 
St. Martin of Tours, 115 
St. Patrick, 255 

St. Peter, Church of, at Rome, 166, 

600-601 

St. Remigius, 125 
St. Simeon Stylites, 114 
St. Sophia, Church of, 92, 104-105, 
578 

St. Stephen, king of Hungary, 239, 
562 

St. Theodulf, 118 

St. Thomas a Becket, 482, 487-489 
St. Thomas Aquinas, 417 
Saints, veneration of, 383-384 
Saintonge, county of, 240, 460 
Saladin, 312, 314, 315, 489 
Salerno, university of, 193, 366 
Saracens, see Arabs 
Saragossa, 570 
Sardinia, 295 

Saxony and the Saxons, 62, 139, 
147-148, 168, 226, 228, 230, 355, 
564 

Scandinavia, 5, 170, 173, 267 
Scheldt river, 244 

Schism, between Greek and Roman 
Catholic churches, 107, 120 
Schleswig, mark of, 227, 228 
Scholasticism, 405-409, 591 
Schools, of Athens, 448; Roman, 
403, 404; cathedral, 404-406 
Science, Greek, 418; Hindu, 419; 
Arabic, 192-193, 390, 419, 420; 
Mediaeval, 417-424 
Scotland, 5, 6, 258, 338 
Scriptorium , 90, 118, 158 
Sculpture, Gothic, 454-455; Ren¬ 
ascence, 601-602 
Seine river, 5, 244 
Sempach, battle of, 553 
Senechals, 466, 468 
Senegal river, 584, 585 
Serbia, 566, 576, 577 
Serfs, 134-135, 196, 509-510; and 
see Feudalism 

Serjeanties, 204; and see Feudalism 
Seven Electors, of the Holy Roman 
Empire, 550 
Seville, 173, 419, 572 


Sforza, Francesco, 610 
Sheep-raising, 397 
Sheriff, English, 263 
Sherwood Forest, 117 
Shipping, mediaeval, 343-344, 594- 
595; influence of the Crusades on, 
322; Genoese, 585; Portuguese, 
584; Venetian, 317, 581 
Shire, English, 262-263, 271 
Shire-moot, 262-263 
Sicily, 166, 274, 295, 327, 330, 364, 
494 

Siena, 331 

Sigismund, emperor, Holy Roman 
Empire, 542, 551 
Silk industry, 94, 192 
Simon de Montfort, the elder, 464 
Simon de Montfort, leader of the 
English barons, 494-496 
Simony, 270, 281, 283-284 
Sixtus IV, Pope, 377 
Sixtus V, 378 

Slavery, in the Roman Empire, 32- 
33, 60, 196; among the early Ger¬ 
mans, 53; among the Franks, 132- 
133; in the middle ages, 217 
Slavonia, 100 
Slavic languages, 430 
Slavs, chap. 32; early history of, 
558; Eastern, 562-566; Southern, 
99, 100, 101, 566; Western, 148, 
558-561 

Sluys, battle of, 502, 516 
Socrates, 16 
Somme river, 245 
Sophists, 16 
Sophocles, 17 

South Saxons, kingdom of, 254 
Spain and the Spanish peninsula, 
105, 185, 545, 567-575, 597, 611; 
climate, 568; Romanization of, 
568; West Gothic influence, 568; 
Moorish influence, 186-187, 573, 
568-669 

Spanish March, 150, 433, 571 
Speyer, 341 

Spoleto, duchy of, 99, 233, 235 
Stained glass, 453-455 
Stamford Bridge, battle of, 269 
States of the Church, 121, 273, 387, 
608, 610 


INDEX 


631 


Stephen II, Pope, 141 
Stephen, king of England, 474. 478- 
479 

Stephen, count of Blois, 301 
Stettin, 175, 341 
Stilicho, 60, 66, 67, 68 
Stockholm, 555 
Stonehenge, 7 
Stralsund, Treaty of, 556 
Strassbourg, 341, 544 
Students, mediaeval, 411 
Studium Generate , 412-413 
Suabia, duchy of, 168, 226, 227, 228, 
231, 548-549 
Suevi, 59, 62, 70 
Sugar, 223 
Sweden, 556, 557 

Sweyn Forkbeard, king of Scan¬ 
dinavia, 239, 267 
Switzerland, 4, 7, 552 
Syagrius, 124 

Sylvester II, Pope, 142,237, 418-419 
Symmachus, 85 
Syria, 94, 297 

Tacitus, 50, 252, 431, 590 
Tattle, 221 
Tamurlane, 577 
Tancred of Hauteville, 275 
Tannenburg, battle of, 561 
Tartars, see Mongols 
Taurus Mountains, 303, 304 
Taxation, in the Eastern Empire, 
94, 186; in Moslem lands, 186; 
in mediaeval France, 470-471, 
526; papal, 494, 534-635, 543 
Tell, William, Swiss hero, 552 
Templars, 309, 312, 320, 471, 532 
Temple, of Jupiter Capitoline, 74; 
of Solomon, 74 

Tenants-in-chief, 198; and see Feud¬ 
alism 

Testry, battle of, 128 
Teutonic Order, 309, 320, 371, 555, 
557, 561 

Textile industry, 510; in Flanders, 
501; in Florence, 605-606 
Thales of Miletus, 15 
Theodora, wife of Justinian, 96 
Theodoric, king of the East Goths, 
75, 76, 82-85, 90, 126 


Theodosius I, Roman emperor, 35, 
42 

Theodosius II, 66 

Theology, 46-48, 106-107, 404, 411, 

415-417 

Theophano, wife of Otto II, 234 
Thor, 58 

Thorn, Treaty of, 561 
Thousand and One Nights, 188 
Thrace, 577 

Three-field system, 213; and see 
Feudalism 
Thucydides, 17 
Thuringia, 139 
Tinchebrai, battle of, 476 
Tintoretto, 604 
Tiryns, 13 
Titian, 604 

Todi, Jocopone da, Tuscan poet, 441 
Toledo, 419; archbishop of, 376 
Toscanelli, physicist, 596 
Toulouse, city of, 81, 246; county of, 
246, 319, 340, 393, 394, 464 
Touraine, county of, 245, 462, 463, 
479 

Tournai, 70 

Tours, 341, 405; bishop of, 139, 185 
Towns, chap. 21; of the Roman 
Empire, 85-86; of Roman Brit¬ 
ain, 252; of Roman Gaul, 325; of 
Flanders, 339-340, 501; of France, 
340, 341; of Germany, 340-341, 
548, 554-657; of northern Italy, 
321, 368-369, 588; of Spain, 574 
Trade routes, chap. 21; eastern, 557, 
582-583; Baltic, 556; Russian, 
562; to India, 557 

Travel, mediaeval, 344-346; in Mos¬ 
lem lands, 190-191 
Travels, of Marco Polo, 594 
Treasurer, English, 477, 481-482 
Treves (Trier), 341, 554; arch¬ 
bishop of, 550 

Tribonian, Roman legist, 104 
Tripoli, 309, 314; county of, 306, 
307 

Tristram and Iseult, 371 
Trivium, 404 

Troubadours, 438-439, 441 
Troy, 13 

Troyes, Treaty of, 522-523 


632 


INDEX 


“Truce of God”, 280-281 
Tudor, House of, 530 
Tunis, 295 

Turkey and the Turks, Seljuk, 189, 
296-297, 303; Ottoman, 566, 567, 
676-581, 582-583 
Tuscany, 441 
Tyler, Wat, 512 
Tyrants, Italian, 533 
Tyre, 309, 312 
Tyrrhenian Sea, 333 

Ukraine, 62 
Ulfilas, 63-64 

Ulpian, Roman legist, 30, 103, 104 
ZJnam Sanctam, 373, 472 
Universities, mediaeval, chap. 24; 
of doctors, 410-411; of masters, 

412- 413; and modern, compared, 

413- 414; and see Bologna, Cam¬ 
bridge, Heidelberg, Naples, Ox¬ 
ford, Paris, Prague, and Salerno 

Ural Mountains, 6 
Urban II, Pope, 293, 297, 298, 320, 
377 

Urban IV, 378 
Urban VI, 537, 538 
Utrecht, 162, 405 

Valdemar IV, king of Denmark, 
556 

Valencia, 574 
Valenciennes, 339, 340 
Valens, Roman emperor, 35, 65 
Valentinian III, 74 
Valhalla, 57 
Valkyries, 57 
Valla, Lorenzo, 593 
Vallombrosa, monastic order of, 
279, 399 

Vandal language, 81 
Vandalism, 74, 81 
Vandals, 62, 70, 80-81 
Varangian route, 175, 326 
Varna, battle of, 578 
Vasco da Gama, see Gama 
Venice, 73, 309, 315, 317, 321, 322, 
326-327, 330, 331-333, 334, 338, 
343, 422, 511, 557, 564, 572, 575, 
681-683, 592, 598, 606, 608; 
Peace of, 358 


Verberie, 129 
Vercingetorix, 252 
Verdun, Treaty of, 163, 164 
Vergil, 28, 158, 443 
Vermandois, county of, 461 
Verona, city of, 331; mark of, 233 
Victor IV, antipope, 357 
Vie de St. Louis , by Joinville, 322 
Vienna, 295, 564 
Vikings, see Northmen 
Villa, Roman, 210 
Village, early German, 52 
Village community, 131-132, 195, 
211, 221-222, 261-262 
Villeins, 217-219; and see Feudalism 
Villon, Francois, 526 
Vinci, Leonardo da, 588, 604 
Vinland, 173 

Virgin, veneration of the, 383-384 
Visconti, ruling house of Milan, 608- 
609 

Visigoths, see Goths 
Vision of Piers Plowman , 517 
Vistula river, 5, 560 
Volga river, 564 
Volkhov river, 175 
Vosges Mountains, 4 
Vulgate, 110, 423, 426, 443, 593; 
and see Bible 

Waldensians, 392-393, 544 
Waldo, Peter, 392, 393, 396 
Wales, 3, 5, 6, 497, 500, 519; Prince 
of, 497 

Wallace, William, Scottish hero, 
498 

Walloons, 244 
Walter the Penniless, 300 
Walther von der Vogelweide, 371, 
439-440 

War, art of, Greek, 19; Macedonian, 
19; Roman, 24-25; early medi¬ 
eval, 135-136; Norse, 171-172; 
Saracenic, 303; English, 504-505; 
economic and social effects of, 
526, 529, 605; movement for the 
abolition of, 20-21; and see 
“Peace of God”, “Truce of 
God”, etc. 

Wars of the Roses, 525, 527, 528-530 
Weavers, Flemish, 501 


INDEX 


633 


Wedmore, treaty of, 174, 259 
Wends, 227 

Wenzel, emperor, Holy Roman Em¬ 
pire, 550 
Wergeld, 53, 132 

Wessex, Anglo-Saxon kingdom of, 
165, 254, 256, 258, 265; earldom 
of, 266 

West Franks, kingdom of, 168; and 
see Franks 

West Goths, 32, 63-69, 81-82, 124, 
185 

Westminster Abbey, 269, 476, 493 
William the Conqueror, duke of 
Normandy and king of England, 
198, 268-272, 289, 474 
William II, 300, 474-476 
William the Bad, king of Naples and 
Sicily, 356 

William the Good, king of Naples 
and Sicily, 481 

William, duke of Aquitaine, 439 
William of Champeaux, realist, 407 
William of Ockham, nominalist, 533, 
535, 541 


William of Tyre, historian of the 
Crusades, 322 
Whitby, synod of, 256 
White Sea, 5 
Wight, Isle of, 254 
Wills, 386 
Wisby, 556 

Witanagemot, Anglo-Saxon, 263, 
269, 271 
Wodin, 57-58 

Wolfram of Eschenbach, 371, 436, 
439 

Wool growing, 510 
Workers, urban, 513-515 
Worms, 341 

Wyclif, John, 517, 638-539, 540 

York, House of, 529-530 
Ypres, 340, 514 

Zacharias, Pope, 140 
Zara, 315, 316 

Zeno, Roman emperor, 75, 76 
Ziska, Bohemian patriot, 560 
Zoroaster, 115 

























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